"The Handmaid's Tale," by Margaret Atwood. (Audible Studios. Unabridged, 12¼ hours.)
Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" (1985) has never been out of print, has spawned many translations and productions and has been available for years in Claire Danes' Audie Award-winning performance. But now, our own uneasy times have lent the novel added relevance, bringing a TV series and an expanded edition of the audiobook. Added to Danes' celebrated narration is an afterword by Atwood, explaining in her quiet, sane voice the book's origins, inspiration and bearing on the current political and social climate.
The novel purports to be a transcript of secret testimony recorded over old music cassettes by Offred, a "handmaid" condemned to be a "womb on two legs" in the totalitarian Republic of Gilead, the former United States. This new production intersperses snatches of the original music over which Offred recorded her tale. And the book itself has grown here beyond its former last line, that uttered by Prof. Pieixoto, lecturing in 2195 at a symposium on the now extinct Gilead: "Are there any questions?" There are! Members of his audience, a multivoiced assemblage, would like to know everything from where the tapes were found to how safe they may consider themselves from another such tyrannical regime.
The audiobook is further enhanced by a fine concluding essay by Valerie Martin read by Allyson Johnson. This highly pertinent, ingeniously conceived production deepens the original work and even surpasses it.
"Their Finest," by Lissa Evans. (HarperAudio. Unabridged, 12¾ hours.)
"Their Finest" — the basis of a recent movie starring Gemma Arterton — opens in 1940 as Britain's Ministry of Information gears up its film division to produce wartime propaganda. The wry, semisweet tale follows the making of a movie inspired by the actions of twin sisters in evacuating British troops from Dunkirk. The points of view of three characters dominate: Catrin, a young Welshwoman who has fallen into the role of scriptwriter, much to the entertainingly obtuse disbelief of the male-dominated film crew and cast; Ambrose, a conceited former lead, now gallingly reduced to character roles, and Edith, a 30-something costume seamstress for Madame Tussauds, consigned by the world to spinsterhood. (We'll just see about that.)
The characters come from all over, and narrator Peter Wickham manages a handy approximation of their accents, while bringing a clipped and proper English delivery to general narration. Wickham also conveys the dismay and terror of those enduring the Blitz, "the distant crumps that would suddenly move nearer, as if a Titan were striding across London."
"Pachinko," by Min Jin Lee. (Hachette Audio. Unabridged, 18¼ hours.)
Min Jin Lee's second novel is a culturally rich, psychologically astute family saga. It begins in Korea in 1910, the year of Japanese annexation, and ends four generations later in Japan. Sunja is the only child of a Korean fisherman and his wife, who keeps a small boardinghouse. Hardworking and innocent, Sunja becomes pregnant at 16 by Hansu, a married businessman. She is saved from disgrace by a young Korean Presbyterian minister who marries her out of goodness. The couple immigrate to Japan, where Koreans are a despised underclass.
Allison Hiroto reads this moving novel in a sweet, compassionate voice. She has a storyteller's gift of distinguishing between speakers through modulations of tone and disposition. Further, her voice has great emotional range, capturing the fluctuations of joy, sorrow, anger, shame and hope in the hearts of these people as they wrestle with notions of home and the corrosive effects of bigotry.
Katherine A. Powers, a Minnesota native, reviews for the Star Tribune and the Washington Post.
