22 Feb / Listen-Alikes: Tell Me a (Short) Story [in Booklist]
Short stories can be the perfect antidote to these days of winter blues, pandemic panic, and cabin fever. Deesha Philyaw’s debut short-story collection – The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, a much-lauded, National-Book-Award-finalist – illuminates the lives of nine Black woman with a performance from Janina Edwards as nuanced as the characters she portrays. She is one of the many fab readers ready to tell you a short story – or dozens. Each of these single-author collections should be fully enjoyed, but I’ll tempt you with a single story from each to get you started.
Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories. By Young-Ha Kim. Read by the David Shih. Apr. 2019. HighBridge, CD, (9781684573707).
“Diary of a Murderer” introduces a septuagenarian serial killer who’s keeping a journal to record whatever his Alzheimer’s doesn’t steal away. He’s got to commit one final murder to save his daughter’s life.
Everything Inside. By Edwidge Danticat. Read by Robin Miles. Sept. 2019. 6hr. Recorded Books, CD, $102.75 (9781501986901).
In this Booklist starred collection, survivors navigate new lives in “The Gift,” featuring an artist who lost her lover’s baby, and her lover, who has lost his wife and young daughter.
Exhalation. By Ted Chiang. Read by a full cast. May 2019. 7hr. Books on Tape, DD, $57 (9781984844460).
“The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” introduces “digients”– not unlike Tamagotchi virtual pets – that become increasingly sapient as their interactions with their human creators grow in Chiang’s second and starred collection.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance. By Zora Neale Hurston. Ed. by Genevieve West. Read by Aunjanue Ellis. Mar. 2020. HarperAudio, DD, $23.99 (9780062915832).
No story to call out in this starred collection: one of the 20th-century’s most celebrated, iconic writers needs your full attention. Reading this in print might be challenging for some, as Hurston freely shifts between regional and vernacular dialects, but Ellis – making her stupendous audiobook debut – proves an ideal guide through Hurston’s rediscovered, beckoning world.
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears. By Laura Van den Berg. Read by Amy Landon. July 2020. 6hr. Tantor, DD, $19.99 (9781705213025).
In “Karolina,” a Miami-based art restorer traveling to post-earthquake Mexico City encounters her brother’s now-homeless ex-wife who reveals the ugly truth about their marriage.
The Lonesome Bodybuilder. By Yukiko Motoya. Read by a full cast. Nov. 2018. 5.5hr. Blackstone, CD, $29.95 (9781982600747).
The titular story in Motoya’s beguiling English-language debut features a woman whose substantial physical transformation goes unnoticed by her husband.
Sabrina & Corina. By Kali Fajardo-Anstine. Read by a full cast. Apr. 2019. 7.5hr. Books on Tape, DD, $66.50 (9781984832207).
#OwnVoices, YES: a half-dozen Latinx readers voice Fajardo-Anstine’s superb, Booklist starred debut. In “Sabrina & Corina,” one cousin is tasked with preparing the other’s murdered corpse by order of their grandmother.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. By Deesha Philyaw. Read by Janina Edwards. 2020. 4hr. Tantor, DD, $12.99 (9781705268803).
Two linked stories prove unforgettable: in “Peach Cobbler,” a daughter bears witness to her mother’s destructive affair with the married pastor; the daughter reappears in “Instructions for Married Christian Husbands” as a steely woman in utter control of her never-committal sexuality. A starred collection.
To Be a Man: Stories. By Nicole Krauss. Read by the author. 2020. 7hr. HarperAudio, DD, $20.99 (9780063050679).
Krauss makes her full aural debut (she read a story in a 2012 Etgar Karet title) with this collection exposing women’s relationships with men: “To Be a Man”’s protagonist offers a succinct, biting summary – “there was very little left that a man could give her that she really needed.”
White Dancing Elephants. By Chaya Bhuvaneswar. Read by Priya Ayyar. Oct. 2018. 7hr. Blackstone, CD, $69 (9781982584177).
A woman experiencing a miscarriage in the titular story imagines the life her child will never have.
Published: “Listen-Alikes: Tell Me a (Short) Story,” “Media,” Booklist, February 15, 2021