Hearing a story told from multiple perspectives, in multiple voices, is something that’s unique to audiobooks as a literary form. When a production gets it right, the disparate voices come together as a cohesive ensemble to create a satisfying whole.
Six narrators perform Grant Ginder’s novel So Old, So Young (Simon & Schuster Audio, Feb. 17): Jill Paice, Christian Barillas, Santino Fontana, Greta Jung, Patti Murin, and Michael Urie. They portray a group of six friends, and Ginder’s novel explores their lives over the course of 20+ years. As our review notes, each narrator gets to really sink into their character: “Paice performs Mia, a writer who is the only single person in the group, with fine tempo and pacing and gets her angsty tone. Fontana is equally impressive as the brilliant Marco, and Barillas nails the complex alcoholic Richie.” For the listener, this means that each character becomes distinct, and there’s no difficulty in distinguishing perspectives or points of view.
Similarly, in Ashley Winstead’s novel The Future Saints (Simon & Schuster Audio, Jan. 20), narrators Ali Andre Ali, Brittany Pressley, Vikas Adam, and Tyla Collier portray not only a record company exec and the members of a band but also some more nebulous voices: social media commentators, interviewers, videos on E! News and TMZ.com, and more. Adam and Collier take on these voices, and our reviewer commends them for shifting easily between accents and attitudes. Having multiple voices perform these multimedia snippets lifts them off the page and gives them added dimension that fleshes out the realistic world of a rock band on the rise.
Keeping track of shifting timelines can be challenging for audiobook listeners—it’s not just a matter of flipping back a few pages and reorienting yourself if you get lost. But having different narrators portray characters in the past and the present can help with that. Seven narrators perform Rachel Hawkins’ compelling mystery The Storm (Macmillan Audio, Jan. 6). Stephanie Németh-Parker, Alex Knox, Cathi Colas, Dan Bittner, Jane Oppenheimer, Patti Murin, and Petrea Burchard manage both the present-day storyline, in which an innkeeper in St. Menard’s Bay, Alabama, struggles to keep her family business afloat, and the past narrative, which concerns a murder that took place during a hurricane. As our review concludes, “The narration perfectly matches the slow burn of the mystery and sets the stage as decades-old secrets are revealed.”
Multiple narrators can work well for fiction audiobooks. But what about nonfiction? Our review notes that speaker and communication coach Carmine Gallo’s Viral Voices (Macmillan Audio, Feb. 24), an audio original, “is a fantastic example of a nonfiction work that is vastly improved by the audiobook format.” Gallo’s audiobook is doing something different from the ensemble narrations above. Instead, to illustrate Gallo’s lessons, the audiobook includes clips from recordings, interviews, videos, and more. So in addition to Gallo himself, listeners get to hear everyone from President John F. Kennedy to Malala Yousafzai to MrBeast demonstrating their communication styles. The effect, according to our review, “makes this instructional audiobook intensely alive.”
These audiobooks prove that hearing multiple voices in your ear can be a very good thing.
Jennifer Dowell is the audiobooks editor.
