The Best Audiobooks Of 2020
The Louder I Will Sing by Lee Lawrence
It's now 35 years since Cherry Groce was shot by police when they raided her home in Brixton. Her son, the then 11-year-old Lee, could only watch on as she was falsely pronounced dead on the news, and as anger in the community at yet more police brutality towards Black Londoners turned into two days of violence and destruction, with petrol bombs launched and cars torched in the streets. After the riots were over, though, the aftershocks continued for Lee. Since the bullet had shattered his mum's spine, he became her full-time carer while fighting to get the police to admit they had done anything wrong. It was a fight that would take nearly 30 years. This is urgent, uplifting stuff.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
Originally published in 1965, this new reading of the civil rights crusader features Laurence Fishburne voicing Malcolm X's telling of his life story. It's a perfect combination: the clarity and fervency of Malcolm X's convictions get the full power and heft they're due thanks to Fishburne's gravitas. As told to journalist and author Haley, this is the full outline of how Malcolm X's theories on Black pride, Black nationalism and pan-Africanism link together and formed a worldview which echoes as resoundingly 50 years on.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
We like Will Poulter a lot at Esquire, and he's a very good fit to read Dostoyevsky's classic psychological thriller. In poverty-wracked St Petersburg, a young man needs money desperately – so desperately that he's willing to kill pawnbroker for her cash. What he's not ready for, though, is the spiritual and mental agony he's about to go through. Despite being nearly 150 years old, the sharpness of Dostoyevsky's portrait of the mind's workings still feels very contemporary.
Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story by Mollie Gregory
Gregory's 2015 history telling the hidden story of women in the film industry is newly rendered in audio. In the very earliest days of the cinema industry, women were involved in every area of production, including being able to take on some of the most dangerous and thrilling stunts captured on film. However, as things became more and more lucrative, women were edged to the margins of the most powerful positions, and even stunt work started to be done by men in drag. Gregory interviews sixty-five stuntwomen who tell the story of a century of their fascinating and critical work, and how they eventually forced their way back to the forefront of the industry.
Coming Undone: A Memoir by Terri White
In 2012, Terri White pitched up in New York to take over as editor at Time Out magazine. Everything seemed set for her to take on the world, but things didn't turn out that way. Lost in the city, she starts losing her grip on herself and tumbling out of too many bars she can't go back to. Mornings start to take on a familiar rhythm: "Wake up, panic, feel guilty and/or ashamed, vomit, shower, vomit (sometimes in the shower), dress, paint my face, pour eye drops in my eyes to dissolve away the lightning streaks and shoots of red."
Things grow more and more fractured and strained until White ends up in an emergency room after an overdose. The roots of her unhappiness go all the way back to her childhood, and the vividness and dark clarity with which she plots both her unravelling and the gradual rebuilding that led her back to contentment makes this a uniquely compelling and raw listening experience. There's a streak of black humour throughout too, though. White, now the editor of Empire magazine, reads her own story. It's difficult to hear sometimes, but the quality of the writing always shines.
Dear NHS: A Collection of Stories to Say Thank You
Saying thanks to the NHS never really stops being a good thing to do, but now more than ever – as every single advert has had it for the last four months – it's a particularly good thing to do. This is an anthology edited by Adam Kay, former doctor and author of This is Going to Hurt, and it features contributors reading their own letters of thanks to the NHS.
The list of people chipping in is extremely handy too: 75 notables including Queenie author Candice Carty-Williams, Michael Palin, Emilia Clarke, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Kathy Burke and Paul McCartney, whose mum was a NHS midwife in post-war Liverpool, tell their stories of what the NHS means to them. Money from each download will go to NHS Charities Together too.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twins look identical, but over the course of 40 years the sisters' lives couldn't be more different. Desiree and Stella run away at 16, desperate to escape the small black community they've grown up in, but one sister returns home and marries a black man, while the other starts passing for white. The Vanishing Half tracks them over the decades as their lives start to mirror each other, and Stella's covert life comes undone.
Optimism Over Despair by Noam Chomsky
Everything feels a bit overwhelming at the moment, but as this new reading of Chomsky's 2017 book points out, there are reasons to be cheerful. The nub of it is that you've got a choice over how you react to the state of the world: you can despair, and help make the consequences you fear become inevitable; or you can buck up and help sort things out. Which is very easy to say when you're Noam Chomsky, but still.
You People by Nikita Lalwani
You've probably been to Pizzeria Vesuvio, or somewhere a lot like it, loads of times. It's an Italian restaurant somewhere in London, and one staffed by Sri Lankan pizzaiolos and run by undocumented migrants. The man at the top is the mysterious Tuli, and people in need of a place to start again gravitate towards his restaurant.
You People follows Nia, a 19-year-old who's trying to leave her home in Wales behind, and Shan, who fleed the Sri Lankan civil war, as they try to reckon with their family ties. Things become more and more complex as the truth of Tuli's shady operation starts to become clear. It's a story about kindness and guilt, and how for anyone can be expected to carry both with them.
Two Stories by Sally Rooney
If you've mainlined the BBC's Normal People adaptation and already whipped through Rooney's back catalogue, try these two short stories which pull at the same threads of uncertain attraction, miscommunication and tentative flirting which run through Normal People and Conversations With Friends. In Mr Salary, Sukie visits former flatmate Nathan – who's 15 years older than her, and whose sister was married to an uncle of hers – in Dublin for Christmas to escape her parents, while in Colour and Light a fireworks display sparks a connection between two strangers.
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
By dint of being being written by an Irish woman in her twenties, Dolan's debut has drawn a lot of comparisons with Sally Rooney's Normal People and Conversations With Friends. There's a dry wit that's all Dolan's own here though. Dubliner Ava heads to Hong Kong to teach English, and ends up getting involved with flash banker Julian. Things get more complicated, though, when a lawyer called Edith starts to take Ava to the theatre and the pair start inching towards a relationship of their own. What does Ava want more: Edith, or Julian's massive flat?
Ramble Book by Adam Buxton
Given how big his podcast is, it almost seems perverse to experience Buxton's memoirs via an actual printed book. The emphasis here is about growing up in the Eighties, parenthood, losing one's parents, and, inevitably, David Bowie. The audio version is peppered with jingles and interludes that make it feel more like a gigantic podcast in spirit, and then there's an extra podcast-length chat with his old pal and former podcast co-host Joe Cornish on the end for good measure.
A Little History of Poetry by John Carey
Reaching back all the way to the earliest surviving fragment of poetry from 4,000 years ago, this is the pared-down version of how poems and poetry were shaped by and came to shape how humanity saw itself all around the world. It tends to stick to the canon for the most part – this is only a little history after all – but Maya Angelou, Marianne Moore and Derek Walcott get a look in alongside yer Shakespeares, yer Chaucers and yer Yeatses. Above anything else, Carey's history emphasises the vital, constantly shifting quality that makes poetry so mysterious and compelling.
Weather by Jenny Offill
At under four hours, Weather brings a brisk breeze of observations about contemporary life via the letters which librarian Lizzie Benson has to answer. She's been roped in by an increasingly reclusive podcaster who's bombarded by left-wingers worried about environmental collapse and right-wingers who think Western civilisation's crumbling. Can Lizzie help these people, her mentor, or her unstable family?