Every year AudioFile magazine reviews thousands of new audiobooks and in its annual best-of-the-year lists its editors include only books that make exceptional listening. Here Robin Whitten, AudioFile's founder and editor, picks out five outstanding audiobooks in a range of genres and explains what it is that makes them special.
Can you start by explaining how you set about choosing the best audiobooks of 2022?
The books on our âbest audiobooks of 2022â list come from the many reviews that AudioFile has done during the year. So far weâve done 2,500 audiobook reviews. Out of that number, maybe 200 or so are given our Earphones Awards, which means that the reviewer has designated them as exceptional. We start with that group of exceptional audiobooks, and then try to bring that down into nine categories of: fiction, nonfiction & culture, memoir, biography & history, mystery, romance, sci fi, teens, and then children & family listening. We pick six books in each category.
One of the things that we try to do with AudioFileâs list is to make sure it is audiocentric. It has to be exceptional listening; it has to be an audio experience that people will remember. That changes the criteria for what gets on the list, which is nice, because there are many, many lists of the best of everything at this time of year. Our AudioFile list is focused on the objective of an exceptional audio experience.
Presumably, the underlying book has to be good to be able to pull off an exceptional audiobook?
Absolutely. There are certainly examples of books that are not so great that you can enjoy a lot listening to as an audiobook, but theyâre not in this group. These are excellent underlying books and then the extra is the experience that you get from the audio listening.
How many reviewers do you have listening to audiobooks through the year?
We have a lot. At any given time, we have between 80 and 100 different reviewers who are listening for AudioFile in different subject areas. Theyâre based all over and they come with different interests, which makes the reviews different. Because if I were writing all the reviews, they would probably all sound about the same. For the volume of audiobooks we cover, we like to have different points of view from different people with very different interests.
Letâs go through the five youâve picked out for us today. First up is The Marriage Portrait, which is a historical novel set in Renaissance Italy. Tell me a bit about the book and why itâs an exceptional audiobook.
This is by Maggie OâFarrell, who wrote Hamnet, which was a great success last year. In The Marriage Portrait, she takes us to 16th-century Italy and the Medicis. Itâs about a child bride, Lucrezia deâMedici, who is the daughter of Cosimo deâMedici. She marries the Duke of Ferrara at the age of 15. This is a true historical event.
The actress Genevieve Gaunt, who narrates the audiobook, has the perfect voice for this story. Sheâs got a huge range of characters she has to do. She has to be a 15-year-old bride, who has a lot of spirit, but sheâs up against a huge force in the Duke of Ferrara, who has a deep baritone. Then youâve got the courtiers, the princes and her maid. The book is beautifully written, so there are lots of descriptions of the court and the palaces and her garments. Genevieve Gaunt captures not only these portraits, which are very powerful and very diverse, but all the details. She makes you feel like youâre thereâyouâre seeing a table laid with all these foods, or Lucreziaâs gown. You just see it so beautifully.
âIt has to be an audio experience that people will rememberâ
Thereâs a lot going on, and itâs embellished a bit in the romance. Thereâs plenty of melodrama. Itâs also scary because not good things happen. Thatâs true in the history as well. There is a lot of foreshadowing. Itâs just great listening.
Interestingly, the book reviews in print have been mixed. Lots of people love it but there have been some fairly negative reviews. When I read those I thought, âYou just didnât have Genevieve Gaunt telling you this story!â She just places you there as a listener in 16th-century Italy.
In the AudioFile review of The Marriage Portrait, it mentions that Maggie OâFarrell herself does a bit of narration. Is that just at the end of the book, when she explains the historical context?
Yes, she does the historical note, which is extensive because of the research that she did. After youâve finished with the story you can listen to that, although some people prefer to listen to the afterword first.
Why is it called The Marriage Portrait? Is it because of the Robert Browning poem?
There is a portrait of Lucrezia deâMedici attributed to Bronzino. Browning also wrote a poem, âMy Last Duchessâ about the Duke of Ferrara with a fictional portrait. The book has wonderful references back and forth. A portrait of Lucrezia is also being created in the story.
Letâs go on to The Maid which is in one of my favorite genres, mystery. What happens in this book?
The Maid is set in a boutique hotel in Manhattan. The protagonist is Molly the maid, who tells the story. There is a crime, Molly is blamed and we have to figure out what the truth is.
Lauren Ambrose is the narrator. She is an American actress who I donât think has done a lot of audiobooks, but she really gets the character of Molly. Molly is an excellent maid; she gets everything right every time and is very precise. Thatâs very important to her because although itâs not specified, Molly is somewhere on the autism spectrum. Everything has to be in its place and thatâs how she gets through her work and her life. There is a slight speech pattern that Lauren gives Molly that is so subtle and so beautifully articulated. I have no idea how she invented this voice but it is perfect for reflecting the psychology of the character. You really feel you are listening to someone whose whole life has to be in the details done the same every time and that if anything goes awry then youâre off kilter. Itâs just brilliantly done.
The Maid is also a very good mystery, with lots of red herrings, lots of misdirection. Youâre really rooting for Molly to be exonerated.
Next up is a collection of essays by Zora Neale Hurston, You Donât Know Us Negroes. Some of the essays are quite well-known, while others are newly published. Tell me more.
I know Zora Neale Hurston best for her fiction, and particularly Their Eyes Were Watching God, which is probably her best-known work. I have read a couple other of her novels and some short stories. This is the first collection of nonfiction Iâve come across, and it was put together from writings that she did, mostly from Manhattan, in Harlem, during the 1930s, 40s and up into the 50s and they reflect that period of history. She has a very strong, opinionated voice and sheâs using it in these various essays. Some essays are longer than others, some are quite short. The latest is from the 1950s, when she attended a famous trial of a Black woman who was accused of murdering a white doctor after years of his abuse of her. Her voice and her opinions really resonate today.
Whatâs interesting in listening to these essays is that Robin Milesâwho we may have talked about before as an audiobook narrator, sheâs one of our âGolden Voicesââis brilliant at capturing the subtleties of accents, tonal changes, certain regionalisms and the speech patterns. These essays werenât written in the last decade, so the style of the writing is a little different. Robin picks up on all the cadences. The whole stylistic presentation of the essays is fabulous, and also the spirit of the writer, of Zora, comes through so well.
So do you step away from the book very indignant?
Very much so. We believe in what she is saying now, but no one was listening then. That makes you even madderâor at least it makes me madder. With the injustices that we see now, at least there are some people listening, but I can imagine back then they were not being heard in any way. But she was still writing. It makes you wonder where these essays have been all this time, but Iâm glad that theyâve been collected now.
Letâs turn to Inside Voice by Lake Bell, whoâs an actress, director and writer. This came out straight as an audiobook, I believe, because itâs all about the audio?
Inside Voice is strictly audio, as far as I know. Itâs more like a program that you might hear as an extended podcast or a documentary series. Lake Bellâs interest is in the voice: how we hear our own voice and also how we hear othersâ voices. Sheâs fun to listen to and you can take Inside Voice on a couple of different levels.
As a voice actress, she goes over the things that she did to her voice to clean it up, to get rid of regionalisms and speech patterns. Then she comes around to saying this was not a good thing, because we should all have those things that tell people little bits about our culture and our background and where weâre from. If we grew up in Tennessee, then there should be a hint of that in our speaking voice. Itâs part of who we are.
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She also talks about how every time we hear a voice, we judge it in a certain way. Thatâs pretty much innate, so how do you resist that or get beyond it? How do you hear a voice and not make a judgement about something that you think because you hear it?
Another angle on Inside Voice is that if you think about it as an audiobook listener, every time you listen to an audiobook, youâre hearing and judging a voice. That voice has to connect with the right characters or it does not engage you. I think I loved this program because of that, because you can take it on several levels.
Although itâs addressing a pretty serious topic, from the clips that I listened to sheâs trying to be humorous about it. Is the book quite funny?
Yes. She makes it sort of a game sheâs playing. Sheâs very funny. Sheâs snarky. Sheâs smart.
The publisher is Pushkin Industries, which is Malcolm Gladwellâs company. Their whole objective is to push the boundaries of audiobook programming with new ideas. Itâs very forward-thinking. She makes a comment about breaking away or âbloomingâ from the origins of a traditional audiobook. She uses clips from voicemail messages and old answering machine messages, she has clips of other actors with very distinctive voices. She uses all of this material and puts it into this complex program that is her Inside Voice audio.
Letâs move on to the last audiobook on your 2022 list which is In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom, who is a novelist. This one just sounds devastating.
It is a devastating story. Itâs a memoir of her marriage and the death of her husband by assisted suicide. Listening to the audio version embodies why author memoirs are so popular and so powerful as audiobooks. You hear her telling this story. Itâs an intensely personal story. Sheâs a professional in the way that she holds herself together as she tells this story, but as the listener, you hearâshe canât help but have in her voiceâthe emotion and the many feelings that she had as she went through this incredible experience with her husband.
Memoirs can sometimes be fun and funny, but always with an author memoir, that deep emotional piece is in their voice, whether they know it or not, or whether they try to hide it or not. Itâs there, and we hear it. The effectiveness of that connection with us is one of the brilliant things about listening to an audiobook memoir.
In terms of what happens, her husband gets dementia and wants to die, and itâs about her coming to terms with that?
Yes, and how she supports him, despite all the conflicting emotions that she goes through. It was a great marriage. She has a great devotion to him. This was something she wanted to support him in but itâs about how incredibly difficult it was. Itâs amazing that she could write this book. And then that she could record it as well. Itâs a brilliant piece.
Before listening to it, I thought, âDo I really want to listen to this?â but it had excellent reviews. I was entranced by the way she tells the story. She pulls no punches, that honesty in the memoir, and in her voice, was very compelling, as hard as it wasâand it was a whole lot harder on her, of course, than it was on us listening to it. Itâs amazing.
So thatâs a sad one, but there are lots of different kinds of choices on our best-of-the-year list.
Yes, that book is confronting an important issue that we could all face, but itâs not one to pick if youâre looking to listen to an audiobook for escapism.
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Robin Whitten is the founder and editor of AudioFile magazine. Started in 1992, AudioFile reviews and recommends audiobooks as a multi-platform resource, publishing in print, e-newsletters, the AudioFileMagazine.com website, and seasonal programs like AudiobookSYNC for teen audiences. AudioFile also maintains the Talent & Industry Guide, the sourcebook for audiobook professionals. Robin has served on the board of Directors of the Audio Publishers Association, and as an Audie Awards judge.
Robin Whitten is the founder and editor of AudioFile magazine. Started in 1992, AudioFile reviews and recommends audiobooks as a multi-platform resource, publishing in print, e-newsletters, the AudioFileMagazine.com website, and seasonal programs like AudiobookSYNC for teen audiences. AudioFile also maintains the Talent & Industry Guide, the sourcebook for audiobook professionals. Robin has served on the board of Directors of the Audio Publishers Association, and as an Audie Awards judge.