Audiobook Review: Ghettoside

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America (2015)
Written by Jill Leovy
Narrated by Rebecca Lowman
Publisher: Random House Audio/Spiegel & Grau
Run Time: 13 hours 28 minutes

This past weekend, thousands descended onto the University of Southern California campus for the 20th Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. This was my first time attending and it was a blast! Had fun perusing the many booths, scored a good-size book haul and I'm already anticipating next year's event and the panels that go with it. If this year was a toe dip into the proverbial water, next year is the full-on plunge.

A book that was prominently featured in sellers' booths was Ghettoside, written by the Times' own Jill Leovy. The USC campus is south of downtown, but it is a vastly different world than the one Leovy describes a few miles away as part of the 77th Street Division of the LAPD. The division covers 12 square miles of South Los Angeles and neighboring Watts. Many of the homicides are gang-related and black-on-black.

The book follows the murder of Bryant Tennelle, the son of a police detective, and John Skaggs, the man assigned to find the responsible killer. Skaggs is an immediately respectable, if not likable, detective with a low BS-tolerance who genuinely cares about finding justice. His care disarms skeptical residents wary of the LAPD for its past sins, a remarkable feat considering he is white and most of the residents are black.

The entire case, from a gripping interrogation by Skaggs to the courthouse conclusion, is gut-wrenching in its unflinching look at the reality of life in South LA. The sheer number of murders and why they happen caused my jaw to drop.

In an interview with the New York Times Book Review, Leovy referred to residents here feeling "walled in" and sadly, she is right. Commuters from more affluent parts of town like the South Bay will drive by on their way to work downtown via the 110 Freeway, but most wouldn't dare to drive through the actual neighborhoods, even to fill up their gas tank. Leovy also makes the point that many officers of the LAPD do not live in the city itself, but in outlying suburbs like Santa Clarita (my hometown), Orange County and Simi Valley. Tennelle's father lived in the area he policed, so he had a high investment in the safety of his community, making him admirable and sympathetic even before the tragic loss of his son.

Rebecca Lowman delivers solid narration for the audiobook, refraining from dramatic voicing or unnecessary frills when the book so starkly lays out the crime epidemic. A minor gripe I had with the book is that Leovy addresses some solutions to the problem of black-on-black violence at the book's conclusion, but they felt rushed. I wouldn't have minded seeing more details on those ideas and how they would have helped the people of South LA.

Grade: 4/5 stars. In a year of outstanding nonfiction so far, Leovy's journalistic narrative stands out as a testament to the current state of crime in America. As a newspaper reporter myself, there are stories I've covered that were horrific, but needed to be told. Likewise, Leovy has done that with Ghettoside.

Below is a portion of an interview between LA-based PBS host Tavis Smiley and Leovy about the book...

Audiobook Review: The Book of Unknown Americans

The Book of Unknown Americans (2014)
Written by Cristina Henriquez
Narrated by Yareli Arizmendi, Christine Avila, Jesse Corti, Gustavo Res, Ozzie Rodriguez and Gabriel Romero
Run Time: 9 hours, 12 minutes
Publisher: Random House Audio/Knopf

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 — Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (1883)

Lazarus' poem, mounted on the inside of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty 20 years after it was first written, was emblematic of European immigrants' hope for a better life once they passed Lady Liberty's lamp beside the proverbial golden door that was Ellis Island. According to records, about 12 million immigrants transited through the island by the time it closed in 1954. The process to get into America took three to seven hours. For those that made it through, Ellis Island was an "Island of Hope." Those that were turned away, often because of a criminal record, insanity or a chronic illness, dubbed it the "Island of Tears."

A century later, the lamp is still lit and people from all over the world want to get through the golden door and have a better life in America. For some, it remains a place of hope while others have shed tears during their American experience.

Cristina Henriquez's book The Book of Unknown Americans taps into the inherent sense of risk and desperation immigrant families have in coming to America for that better quality of life. Arturo, Maribel and Alma Rivera have made the long trek from Mexico to a Delaware apartment complex in the hopes helping Maribel, who has suffered a significant injury. Her parents sacrifice for her to attend a special school, even when facing racism, bureaucracy and ludicrous job conditions. Meanwhile, Maribel starts to fall for Mayor Toro, the son of Panamanian immigrants who also live in the apartment complex.

One of the best qualities of the book, and it really stands out in the audiobook, is the variation of people. There are interludes where immigrants in the apartment complex tell their backstory and come from the likes of Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Mexico and Panama. When these interludes happen, they are each spoken by a different voice actor, giving a variation that hammers home the point that there is no one single road for immigrants. Some of the characters arrive through visas while others walk across the Mexican border or are smuggled into the U.S. No two journeys are alike.

Henriquez writes in a style that at times felt like a series of feature news articles. She writes with a sense of the harsh realities of immigration, because not everything goes swimmingly when a family migrates to another country and tries to adjust to its culture and idiosyncracies. At the same time, there are tender moments, particularly with the teenage romance between Mayor and Maribel. The characters are easy to empathize with, especially when they struggle in adapting to American life.

Rating: 4/5 stars. Regardless of what your view is on the current state of immigration, I would encourage picking up Henriquez's book for the relatable characters and diversity of backgrounds they have as they try to blend into the American melting pot.

As part of the book's launch last year, Henriquez debuted the Unknown Americans Project on Tumblr. Below, she gives a taste of the kinds of stories the project has unearthed.

The book is available in all formats. A paperback edition was just published in the U.S. earlier this month via Vintage.

Audiobook Review: Dead Wake

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2015)
Written by Erik Larson
Narrated by Scott Brick
Run Time: 13 hours, 4 minutes
Publisher: Random House Audio/Crown

Like two bullet trains on a collision course, the Lusitania sinking at the hands of the German U-boat U-20 is a gripping story.

While reading Erik Larson's excellent history of the Lusitania's sinking, Dead Wake, I often had a sense of dread. Like a retelling of other historical attacks such as Pearl Harbor, I read Larson's thriller of a book hoping something or someone would intervene, but knowing full-well that no intervention would come.

Larson is one of the best at writing narrative history and his eye for detail is ever-present in Dead Wake. Not only does Larson give full backgrounds of Lusitania captain William Turner and U-20 captain Walther Schwieger, but also many of the Lusitania's passengers. He explains the diplomatic tensions at the time and even delves into President Woodrow Wilson's search for companionship, which was happening simultaneously with Lusitania's voyage.

Larson's book is written on a big scale, stretching from the walls of the White House to inside the British Admiralty. And yet, it isn't overwhelming. One of my favorite aspects of the book was the descriptions of how passengers passed time while onboard, including poetry readings. Man, how times have changed.

Brick's narration provided a sure hand through the story, accentuating moments of tension without going over the top or sounding melodramatic. There are even sections in Brick's narration that manage to be very humorous, a respite from the white-knuckle tale. And when the attack comes, it is handled with grace by both Larson and Brick.

Rating: 5/5 stars. This was one of the most eagerly anticipated nonfiction books of the year and it didn't disappoint.

Below, Larson reads the prologue from Dead Wake during a Q and A with the Wall Street Journal. It sets up the story to unfold well and gives an idea of what is to come in the later pages.

Audiobook Review: The Buried Giant

The Buried Giant (2015)
Written by Kazuo Ishiguro
Narrated by David Horovitch
Run Time: 11 hours and 48 minutes
Publisher: Random House Audio/Knopf

I had never read an Ishiguro book prior to his newest tale, one set in a Britain of mottled greens and greys as well as giants, ogres, dragons and other fantasy folk. Would it match up to the hype? Sort of.

The book follows an elderly couple named Beatrice and Axl who seek to reunite with their long-lost son. Along the way, they meet Arthurian knight Sir Gawain, a boatman and an assortment of other characters. They want to end a supernatural mist that causes the area's inhabitants to forget their past.

The book weaves in allegory akin to The Chronicles of Narnia, the quest from Beowulf and a malevolent dragon from the likes of The Hobbit. Some of the allegorical motifs really worked. The novels themes of memory, both collective and personal, were intriguing, especially when transposed with our digital era of instant gratification and forgetting history. Other issues like ethnic conflict also factor into the narrative. While the titular giant is mentioned briefly at about a quarter or so in, I thought the title was reflective of uncovering memory.

The narrator's prose, when read by Horovitch, reminded me of what I imagined the professor in Narnia or a conversation between Gandalf and Bilbo sounding like. The sound is of a scholarly English gentleman and it really shows, particularly in conversations between Axl and Sir Gawain. At first, the novel had a great start, but then it started to really slow for me as the story shifted away from Beatrice and Axl. I just didn't find the other characters to be as likable. There were lengthy conversations that seemed to be circular and repetitive and there were several times when I felt like I had a case of audio deja vu. During these moments, I often wondered what the other characters were doing and had to really focus to get back into the story. It picked up again in the end, but that was mostly due to a shift of focus back to Axl and Beatrice.

There has been heated debate online as to whether or not this novel is a fantasy book. I would classify it as part of the genre in part because it has characters that would be at home in a fantasy novel and an archetypal quest. Having said that, if you're expecting grand battles a la The Lord of the Rings or similar books in the genre, this book is not that kind of page-turner.

Grade: 3/5 stars. Fantasy books like Narnia and The Lord of the Rings were books that established my love of reading. In some aspects, Ishiguro did them proud, namely the use of allegory, conversation style and setting. However, the middle portion of the book heavily sagged for me. While the audio narration by Horovitch is very good, I would urge readers to read the print or ebook editions, since it is a book that works best with complete undivided attention.

For a primer on the book from Ishiguro himself, click here.

Unsurprisingly, Hollywood power producer Scott Rudin, who has a long track record of purchasing the rights to books, purchased the film rights a day after the book's publication. However, I genuinely don't see this book lending itself to film well.

Audiobook Review: The Night Circus

The Night Circus (2011)
Wriiten by Erin Morgenstern
Narrated by Jim Dale
Run Time: 13 hours, 40 minutes
Publisher: Random House Audio/Doubleday

The music started off with spooky, ethereal tones. I was nervous as to whether or not I'd like audiobooks after a first try two years ago that turned out less than stellar. I knew Jim Dale was supposed to be a legend within the audiobook community after doing the narration for the Harry Potter series, so I figured The Night Circus was a good place to start.

The book is the story of Celia Bowen and Marco Alisdair, two magicians of considerable skill pitted against each other in a high-stakes "challenge" that could result in death. Celia is the leading illusionist at Le Cirque De Reve, a late 1800's traveling circus that "opens at nightfall, closes at dawn." Marco helps run the circus, but has ulterior motives for his involvement. Eventually, the two start to be smitten with each other before conflict ensues.

The book's strength is in its descriptions of items, not its plot. Hearing Dale describe colors, foods and textures, among other items, was a delight. He is so good, I would pay to hear this man read nutrition label facts at a grocery store. He nails various English-language dialects, including what sounded like Irish and Scottish, with ease. The praise and accolades showered on Dale were validated by his performance here.

The world Morgenstern creates and Dale explains is stunning at first glance, but as the novel progresses, the luster starts to wear off and the characters become fairly predictable. When the two magicians try to find a way out of the challenge, I knew exactly how they would do it, in part because it had been strongly hinted at earlier in the book. By the time the book's main plot conflict was over, I was ready to pack up and go, but there was still 45 minutes left to tie up the story. At the end, there's a plot twist that sort of reminded me of Christopher Nolan's film The Prestige in terms of a shocking twist finale. It worked in Nolan's movie, but it did not work here.

Rating: 3.5 stars. The audiobook narration was a delight to listen to coming to and from work and the world of The Night Circus is intricately detailed. However, the book is hindered by a slow-moving plot, especially in the cumbersome third act. Having said that, it was a great starter audiobook and had me rush onto the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that. Then, I finally said screw it and got an Audible subscription.

The Harry Potter connection doesn't end with Dale. Potter film producer David Heyman will also produce a movie adaptation of this novel as well. Lionsgate/Summit, the film studio that has had huge success in novel adaptations of The Hunger Games, Divergent and Twilight, will handle and oversee this one too. No word on when we might see Marco and Celia grace the big screen, but as I read the book, I could imagine how beautiful it could look.