Like most of us, I look for distraction in this era of coronavirus. I take the risk seriously and find that audiobooks ease my coronavirus anxiety. For those of us staying close to home, sheltering in place or taking a “pause,” audiobooks can take you into another world, provide diversion, entertainment and education. They are easy to download — no touching — and you get hours worth of listening.
Recently, I listened to a couple of best sellers. But I’m also going to share audiobooks that I love and have posted about before. Please enjoy. 
John Grisham knows how to tell a story and The Guardians delivers. It’s a lawyer procedural/thriller that takes you deep into wrongful conviction territory. We join Cullen Post, a lawyer who dropped out of the profession and became an Episcopal priest, and then dedicated his life to fighting to exonerate the wrongfully convicted on death row.
He travels between Savanah, Georgia, Alabama and Florida working for a non-profit with a skeleton staff and a budget to match. But he is effective. This is a Grisham novel and there are plenty of twists and turns, evil doers and nail biters. I’m not a big fan of lawyer novels. But this is a good story and Grisham tells the harrowing tale of the wrongfully convicted and the difficulty of getting them exonerated. He also spices up the story with the involvement of a drug cartel, voodoo, skeletons and sleazy law enforcement officials. Michael Beck is a talented narrator. His characters sound real and you believe you are in their orbit.
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Into the Fire, An Orphan X Novel by Greg Hurwitz and narrated by Scott Brick, may not be everyone’s audiobook of choice. But I have enjoyed every macho, action-packed book in this violent serious. Scott Brick narrates the breathless story of the last adventure of Evan Smoak. Without giving a giant spoiler alert, I can tell you that Smoak is a renegade government assassin. He’s a good guy, recruited from an orphanage when he was a child and trained to kill. But his handler also taught him to have a soul and that’s what make the series compelling.
Into the Fire is supposed to be Smoak’s last mission as a do-gooder defending someone who desperately needs help. Every time Smoak things he’s smote the dragon for his client, some other bad guy pops up. Horowitz builds the tension and excitement and while some of the situations are absolutely implausible, this audiobook was great entertainment. But full disclosure: I earned a black belt in full contact Japanese karate way back in the ’90’s.
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For something totally different, why not try The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, narrated by Tom Hanks. It is a wonderful story brilliantly read.
A beautiful house in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, anchors a messy multi-generational family story that is all at once unique, familiar, and optimistic. Ann Patchett has told interviewers that she writes the same story of blended families over and over again. In 2016 in The Guardian she said, “…you’re in one family, and all of a sudden, you’re in another family and it’s not your choice and you can’t get out.”
But back to the house for a minute. Neighbors and the family call it the “Dutch House” because the original owners, the VanHoebeeks, were from the Netherlands. They died without heirs and left behind their ornate furniture and a couple of beautiful portraits. Enter Cyril Conroy. He buys the house for his wife and family right after World War II, when he leaves the military and they have very little money. She hates the big house and after a bit, vanishes to go work with the poor. So dad hires two local women to help with the house and Danny and his sister Maeve, who although only seven years older is something like a mother to the boy. The story is told from Danny’s perspective as he looks back and describes how he drives around with Cyril on Saturdays collecting rent and learning about the small real estate empire Cyril has built. Danny loves the idea of real estate and owning and images a future in his father’s business. But you know things will change, which they do when Cyril Conroy marries again and adds a young stepmother and two step-sisters to the mix.
What happens next pitches Maeve and Danny into a battle with their stepmother that changes their lives and rages for years. If I write more, you’ll learn the entire story here and that’s not fair. Listen instead.
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The Man Who Saw Everything, by Deborah Levy, was a Booker Prize nominee in 2019. It seems like a straightforward story at first. We begin in 1988 with a young, good-looking, narcissistic historian, Saul Adler, headed to East Berlin to do research and lecture on Eastern European Communism, including Stalin’s sex life. But first his girlfriend Jennifer Moreau, an art student, will take his picture crossing Abbey Road. They stage the photo just like the Beatles album cover because he plans to give it as a gift to his host’s sister. But during the shoot he is grazed by a car and knocked down. Stuff scatters in the road, including a mysterious object with a voice that comes out of it that says, “I hate you. Don’t come home.”
Saul Adler brushes himself off and the story goes on. Back at Jennifer’s apartment they make love and she takes photos of his body parts. He complains to her, and to himself, that she treats him like an object. He is her muse. She considers him beautiful and has photographed him over and over again. She tells him that he never asks about her work, that he assumes it’s all about him and explains that’s why she is breaking up with him. A few days later, he is off to East Berlin, disoriented by the fall caused by the car accident.
In Germany, things happen quickly. He begins a sexual relationship with Walter, the translator, also a Stasi agent or watchdog, who meets him at the train. Walter takes him to his mother’s home, and Saul also has sex with Walter’s sister. Saul seems to become more and more disoriented even as he researches and teaches a course at the university. And then the story takes a dizzying twist and seems to start again. Now we are in 2016 and Saul is hit by the same car again. Or is he? The story rewinds in his mind as he lies in a hospital bed in London confused, maybe dying, trying to make sense of his life and loves.
Jennifer Moreau, now grey-haired and a famous artist, is at his bedside. A doctor seems like a Stasi watcher, his dead father sits at his bedside and talks. The driver of the car, a man named Wolfgang, is also there paying for the private room. It turns out Wolfgang was having a fight with his wife on his cell phone when he knocked Saul down. Remember that mysterious object from 1988.
Through the morphine haze Saul tries to piece together his life. Maybe he gets it right, and maybe he doesn’t. Narrator George Blagden keeps the story going and makes you want to listen.
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You can find more audiobooks that I like here.
