Women Talking

This audiobook offers something unexpected: a story about women, narrated by a man. A colony of Mennonite women who have been assaulted by male colonists must decide how to respond. They come together in a meeting at which minutes are being taken by a man named August Epp. Portraying the eight female characters with seeming ease, narrator Matthew Edison makes the most of a richly layered story about repressed women's choices--which are starkly illuminated even as their conversation and quarrels are reduced to a man's notes. Edison's reserved tone belies the weight of the story's issues of guilt, sin, and propriety. But the themes of patriarchy and religion are heady--so his mildness is appreciated. M.P.P. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine