No Two Persons
A Novel
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No Two Persons
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Auteur(s):
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Erica Bauermeister
À propos de cet audio
Winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Multi-voiced Performance!
This program includes a bonus conversation between the author and narrator.
"The production's 10 outstanding real-life narrators portray the fictional audiobook's author and its nine narrators. Each of the talented real-life narrators brings their character vividly to life."- AudioFile
One book. Nine readers. Ten changed lives. New York Times bestselling author Erica Bauermeister’s No Two Persons is “a gloriously original celebration of fiction, and the ways it deepens our lives.”*
That was the beauty of books, wasn’t it? They took you places you didn’t know you needed to go…
Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to a free diver pushing himself beyond endurance, an artist furious at the world around her, a bookseller in search of love, a widower rent by grief. Each one is drawn into Alice’s novel; each one discovers something different that alters their perspective, and presents new pathways forward for their lives.
Together, their stories reveal how books can affect us in the most beautiful and unexpected of ways—and how we are all more closely connected to one another than we might think.
“With its beautiful parts that add up to a brilliant whole, No Two Persons made my reader’s heart sing.”—*Nina de Gramont, New York Times bestselling author of The Christie Affair
This program is read by a full cast:
Rachel Jacobs as The Writer
Barrie Kreinik as The Assistant
Braden Wright as The Actor
Jesse Vilinsky as The Artist
Max Meyers as The Diver
Gabra Zackman as The Teenager
Stephen Graybill as The Bookseller
George Newbern as The Caretaker
Cassandra Campbell as The Coordinator
Carol Jacobanis as The Agent
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.
Perfect on audio
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In the initial chapter, all of the characters are arguably stereotypical: the overbearing, mean, yelling father; the weak, silenced mother; and ah yes, thank goodness, in spite of being brow-beaten by the father, there is an emotionally mature older brother, who protects his worried and shy little sister, only to die tragically later in life, leaving her emotionally alone. And later at college, the professor mentor, who thinks her writing is absolutely the greatest thing since sliced bread, over and above anything else he has ever read. Really!?! Defies reader belief. In some form or another, these first-chapter characters are all well-worn tropes similar to those found in YA novels but less so in literary fiction for the adult reader.
As I read further, few of the subsequent characters or their stories felt authentic or interesting to me. Some characters and other details were dropped in for a moment without rhyme or reason only to disappear without any effect on the plot: the older women bathers inserted to allow for the main character's observation of their aging bodies; the revelation that the professor's wife was one of the bathers; the child's drawing on the fridge. Why add these a propos of nothing?
The author's ability to develop more complex characters, especially secondary ones may have been limited by the short-story format. In any event, I craved a deeper dive, more time spent revealing the evolution of each of the main characters through believably realistic interactions and context with the secondary ones. The one-dimensionality of these lesser characters cheats our understanding of the main characters; like a simple prop they are soon cast aside. In any event, richer narrative complexities should not be sacrificed for sake of structure to honour a clever concept. Whatever the reason, I judged there to be too much filling-in-the-blanks by the third-person omniscient narrator, speaking for and "telling" the characters' stories.
A sidebar: The author's injection of figurative language to sum up characters' feelings and observations started to really bug me. The adornment of similes and metaphors cannot compensate for limited character development and missing action and interaction in the moment. What to me seemed the overuse of these devices became tiresome; neither did these turns of phrases reveal particularly unique, clever, or poetically phrased insights. Rather than beautifully revelatory, they are often paste glass at best, literary veneers that cannot hide missing elements.
It took many attempts, both reading and listening, to finish the novel. I really, REALLY wanted to love this book, but sadly, it is not for me. Perhaps I should stick with literature and stay clear of women’s genre fiction. That said, so many others praise everything about No Two Persons that my opinions may be those of an outlier. I am happy for women who feel seen and satisfied by the book.
"Too much telling and not enough showing"
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A joy to read
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