Looking for a new listen? Catch up on Corinne’s picks here! Hunter’s grandmother always has excellent insights and entertaining reviews, we include her awesome audiobook reviews in our To Be Read newsletter. Don’t receive our newsletter yet? Just submit your email at the bottom of this page!
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The Glassmaker
by Tracy Chevalier
Narrated by Lisa Flanagan
13 hours, 44 minutes
I must admit to having a heightened interest in glass, having worked as a stained-glass artist for decades. While you may not be as excited to dive into the history of glass making, you’ll discover it is a lovely vehicle for exploring the changing practices of global trading and product production as well as the role of women in the home and workplace. Chevalier uses a creative stone-skipping mode of time travel. Even though I was skeptical, I think it works. Over a span of 450 years – from the Renaissance to the present day – Orsola Rosso ages only 60 years. She along with the whole cast of characters skip across decades from the plague to war with Austria and onward. With a very broad brush, Chevalier uses this unique device for a quick skim of European history. That history is from the singular viewpoint of Venice and the nearby island of Murano through the eyes and voice of Orsola, a daughter in one of the families of glass blowers who brought fortune and fame to the island. The family saga of her life is filled with Italian passion, family rivalries and touching love. The author’s talent for seeing and describing detail captured my attention. Whether she is telling exactly how an artisan creates a decorated bead or elaborate candelabra or relating what lurks beneath the watery surface of the canals or the changing style of gondoliers’ costumes, her extensive research pulses. The gondolier’s mastery of the art of swearing is a hoot. The light easy writing is spiced with bits of Italian names and words rolling musically from the charming narrator. In her earlier historical novel, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Chevalier took us into the world of the Dutch Golden Age with a household servant to a great painter. The Glass Maker is certain to be another book club favorite.
Unsheltered
by Barbara Kingsolver
Narration by Barbara Kingsolver
16 Hours, 38 minutes
Unsheltered sat half read on my shelf for years as my weakening vision made reading difficult. Just now I finished it via the audio book version. And I’m glad because Kingsolver reads her own words and is terrific, bringing a heightened intimacy to the communication with this listener. Published in 2018, the book is strikingly current, with a Trump-like politician lurking in the background. Kingsolver’s title, Unsheltered, suggests the unsettling – the lack of security in two eras of uncertainty. Without a firm foundation, the author posits, civil society as well as an impressive brick house will fall apart. She tells parallel stories, set 150 years apart with the same poorly built house threatening the families seeking shelter. Their stories are set in Vineland, N.J., a real-life utopian planned community where Darwin’s theory of natural selection has shaken the pious founders and God-fearing public. While not part of the novel, Kingsolver’s tale is enhanced by the access she had to correspondence between Charles Darwin and scientist Mary Treat. Also factual was the shooting in broad daylight of a newspaperman by Vinland founder Charles Landis, who walked free. In alternating chapters, a contemporary family struggles to save their inherited, dilapidated house and their collapsing family. The family is beset with suicide, a motherless baby, job insecurity, and a dying grandfather–a vile curmudgeon caught up in racist ranting and talk radio. The characters are complicated and enlivened, and Kingsolver’s writing is witty and profound. Her compassion and passion for the Earth and its inhabitants glows throughout. Before Joyce Carol Oates spoke at the Des Moines Public Library’s June 2024 AVID (Authors Visiting in Des Moines) event, I had decided to NOT read this, her 64th book. The title Butcher and description of a horrid doctor’s brutal medical experiments on the genitalia of patients in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum in Trenton, NJ were red light warnings. Comforted by her intelligent charm I chose to bravely dive in and am glad that I did.
These books are also available in print at Beaverdale Books.
