Valiant Ambition by Nathaniel Philbrick, narrated by Scott Brick, 13:19, Penguin Audio
Scott Brick must be doing something right. He’s voiced more than 600 audiobooks — titles as disparate as Michael Pollan’s “The Botany of Desire” and Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park.” He’s the go-to narrator for mysteries and thrillers, with more than 300 titles to his credit, and he’s the winner of several awards for his work, including two narrator of the year citations from Publishers Weekly. There are audiobook listeners who will only listen to books Brick narrates. What is it about this plain vanilla voice that makes Brick such a popular choice? My guess: He never overpowers the author with his interpretation.
In Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Valiant Ambition,” his steady clarity and light touch are tailored to the material. Philbrick, the author of several histories, including the National Book Award winner “In the Heart of the Sea,” shows how a combination of circumstances and character turned a once-dashing hero of the Revolutionary War, Benedict Arnold, into a traitor. Although the stories of Arnold and George Washington aren’t as interwoven as the book’s subtitle suggests, both confront the slights and mismanagement of the Continental Congress, albeit on far different scales. For Washington, the price of politics is an army neglected and near starvation.
For Arnold, it is the loss of a military commission due to political favoritism and the financial toll of his service. Arnold, described by Philbrick as both tactless and bullheaded, accumulates grudges and debt as the war winds on, leading to the failed plot to turn the fortress at West Point over to the British.
The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley, narrated by Richard Burnip, 11:15, Blackstone Audio
Narrator Richard Burnip likes to pause. He likes to pause between sentences. He likes to pause between phrases. If the length of his pauses were cut by half, he might have shaved an hour from the narration of this engrossing, moody debut novel by Andrew Michael Hurley. This is not to say that Burnip, the voice on more than 70 audiobooks, is unskilled.
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In fact, his characterizations of a small group of Catholic pilgrims visiting a desolate bit of English coastline are sharp: the tightly wound and controlling mother; the Irish priest who repeatedly fails to meet her expectations; the teenager who tells the story. The life of the narrator is entwined in the care of his older, disabled brother, Hanny. Hanny cannot speak, and his mother has designed this pilgrimage for him. She is determined he will drink the healing waters at a nearby shrine and be cured.
Hurley has done something magical here. Although this story winds around a core of the supernatural, always at the forefront are the struggles of the characters within: an old priest’s unraveling, a mother’s willful blindness, a brother’s protectiveness, and most unusually, a landscape, The Loney. This “wild and useless length of English coastline” is so lovingly and clearly evoked, it becomes a character as important as any of the pilgrims, a major player in the drama with lifelong consequences.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, narrated by Maggie Gyllenhaal, 35:40, Audible Studios
It’s only a little cynical to say that celebrity narration is a gimmick. But it’s a smart gimmick in today’s American culture. And the famous can read — often, about as well as I can. But the art of narration is more than following the sentences where they lead, as the best narrators demonstrate with delightful frequency.
So, I’m pleased to report that Maggie Gyllenhaal, the Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-winning actress, really is a good and worthy narrator. Gyllenhaal is gracious to the reader, injecting interest into even the most difficult passages of the Tolstoy classic, “Anna Karenina,” translated by Constance Garnett. Anyone who’s read the book on the page would probably confess to rushing through Tolstoy’s long arguments about the peasantry and politics — subjects opaque to anyone not living in 19th-century Russia.
But Gyllenhaal cannot skim, and as a result, we skimmers will see characters in a new way. Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin, a man uncomfortable anywhere other than his country estate, is often in the thick of these philosophical discussions, and so Gyllenhaal’s bright narration puts him a new light. Gyllenhaal’s only misstep — and a common one for many audiobook performers — is narrating group scenes. Voices can be difficult to distinguish from one another, and occasionally a male voice has a higher pitch than a woman’s, adding to the confusion. But in a nearly 36-hour narration done with evident care, I almost feel guilty for bringing it up.
Jenni Laidman is a frequent Printers Row contributor.