The three Palestinian American women in playwright Betty Shamieh’s first novel, Too Soon (Simon & Schuster Audio, 12 hours and 35 minutes), are at different stages in their lives, but all of them are reeling.
Arabella, a 35-year-old New York theater director, wants to make it on Broadway—but also find a husband and have a child. Playing matchmaker is her determined grandmother Zoya, whose actions prompt her to revisit her own troubled romantic past. Meanwhile, Arabella’s mother, Naya, forced into an arranged marriage by Zoya when she was a teenager, harbors her own secrets.
Distinct voices from three narrators enhance these sharply drawn portraits. Shamieh reads the part of Arabella with brash bravado, showing glimpses of the anxiety masked by Arabella’s wisecracking humor as she travels to Gaza in 2012 to produce an audacious version of Hamlet with a woman playing the lead. Lameece Issaq’s narration echoes a wry, wise gravity as Naya reflects on her responsibility for mistakes and lies she wasn’t compelled to make or tell.
As Zoya, who fled Palestine in the wake of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, Jacquelin Antaramian bears the heaviest burden: reminding the reader that Too Soon isn’t merely a comedy. It’s also a story of loss and dislocation and how cultural traditions don’t always serve those committed to them. It’s a delicate line to walk, but Antaramian’s comedic yet pointed performance strikes a balance that resonates.
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In Mothers and Sons (Hachette Audio, 10 hours and 58 minutes), Adam Haslett’s first novel since 2016’s Imagine Me Gone, the past returns to haunt a gay New York immigration attorney and his estranged mother.
Peter spends his days immersed in the battle to prevent his clients from being deported and his nights keeping his hookups casual. Ann, a former pastor who left her husband and church to run a women’s retreat in Vermont with her new partner, Clare, struggles with her own limitations.
When Peter reluctantly takes the case of Vasel, a young gay Albanian seeking asylum, he’s catapulted back to his adolescence and the events that ruptured his already-fractured relationship with Ann.
Janet Metzger and Andrew Gibson perform the mother-and-son reading duties with steady precision. While Gibson has the more dramatic role and excels at reflecting Peter’s roiling emotions, Metzger’s quiet thoughtfulness invests you in Ann’s emotional reckoning, which is revealed more deliberately.
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Anne Tyler is famous for creating quirky characters who find dealing with the ordinary complications of life more difficult than the rest of us. One such person is Gail Baines of Three Days in June (Random House Audio, 4 hours and 23 minutes). An avalanche of events has upended Gail’s life: She loses her job just before her daughter’s wedding, then her daughter drops a disturbing bomb about her fiancé. Meanwhile, Gail’s shambling ex-husband, Max, has arrived at Gail’s house with a wary, homeless cat in tow, needing a place to stay for the weekend.
As plot goes, that’s about it, but what makes this audiobook a true pleasure is the terrific narration by J. Smith-Cameron of Succession. Her transformation from the HBO show’s steely corporate lawyer to the painfully awkward and more-than-a-little antisocial Gail is a delight. She’s endlessly funny and yet exposes the delicate, all-too-real humanity with which Tyler shapes her endearing oddballs.
Connie Ogle is a writer in South Florida.
