Margaret Atwood’s latest Booker Prize-winning novel is a mystery nested within a love story, nested within a century-spanning exploration of a woman’s life. These layered stories within stories are told through a memoir, a novel, newspaper articles, and pulp science-fiction tales, and are expertly revealed by narrator Margot Dionne. She fully inhabits octogenarian Iris Chase Griffin as her Canadian cadences shift subtly from mature Iris to the younger self she’s remembering and all the others who have peopled Iris’s life. Dionne’s narration is hypnotic and moody, mapping out Atwood’s social and emotional geography, the many little hurts and betrayals, and the hopes. Listeners will find themselves piecing together the clues, guessing at truths, but the rewards are to be found in the layering of details and the skill of the storytelling. J.M.D. 2001 Audie Award Finalist for Solo Female Narration. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine
Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2000
Duration: 18 hrs
DD ISBN: 9780553752922
Publisher: Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
This audiobook is initially daunting. Sixteen hours long and constructed of subtle—at times, even confusing—shifts in point of view, it may feel overwhelming in the first hour. But sticking with George Newbern’s narration and Gilbert’s prose yields great rewards. Newbern’s performance is funny, thoughtful, heartrending, and utterly engrossing. When the famous, now aging, author A.N. Dyer calls his distant sons to his side, Newbern is provided ample characters to animate, and he does so with perfect pacing and what seems like an innate understanding of the novel. He creates a rhythm that makes the changing perspectives easy to follow and Gilbert’s details accessible. & SONS is a perfect example of how a skilled narrator can make a good book even better.
Pub Date: July 23, 2013
Duration: 16 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9780385359566
Publisher: Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Following multiple lives over six decades, this is a story of cultural shifts, the effects of racial prejudice, and family secrets. Joy Osmanski's narration is engaged and easy to listen to. There are times when her narration is uneven and character accents are inconsistent, but she moves the story along at an excellent pace. Will Damron capably narrates a few descriptive paragraphs at the beginning to set the scene. During the '50s, as bombs are explode in Nevada's deserts to entertain Las Vegas tourists, four sets of characters experience the destruction caused by prejudice and social upheaval in their lives. The author skillfully integrates the lives of vivid and realistic characters, bringing them to a satisfying and surprising denouement in the final chapters.
Pub Date: May 2, 2017
Duration: 11 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9781508234715
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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