![]() Let’s go on to The Maid which is in one of my favorite genres, mystery. A portrait of Lucrezia is also being created in the story.īy Nita Prose & narrated by Lauren Ambrose Read The book has wonderful references back and forth. Browning also wrote a poem, “My Last Duchess” about the Duke of Ferrara with a fictional portrait. There is a portrait of Lucrezia de’Medici attributed to Bronzino. Why is it called The Marriage Portrait? Is it because of the Robert Browning poem? After you’ve finished with the story you can listen to that, although some people prefer to listen to the afterword first. Yes, she does the historical note, which is extensive because of the research that she did. Is that just at the end of the book, when she explains the historical context? In the AudioFile review of The Marriage Portrait, it mentions that Maggie O’Farrell herself does a bit of narration. When I read those I thought, ‘You just didn’t have Genevieve Gaunt telling you this story!’ She just places you there as a listener in 16th-century Italy. Lots of people love it but there have been some fairly negative reviews. Interestingly, the book reviews in print have been mixed. It’s also scary because not good things happen. There’s a lot going on, and it’s embellished a bit in the romance. “It has to be an audio experience that people will remember” She makes you feel like you’re there-you’re seeing a table laid with all these foods, or Lucrezia’s gown. Genevieve Gaunt captures not only these portraits, which are very powerful and very diverse, but all the details. The book is beautifully written, so there are lots of descriptions of the court and the palaces and her garments. Then you’ve got the courtiers, the princes and her maid. She has to be a 15-year-old bride, who has a lot of spirit, but she’s up against a huge force in the Duke of Ferrara, who has a deep baritone. She’s got a huge range of characters she has to do. The actress Genevieve Gaunt, who narrates the audiobook, has the perfect voice for this story. She marries the Duke of Ferrara at the age of 15. It’s about a child bride, Lucrezia de’Medici, who is the daughter of Cosimo de’Medici. In The Marriage Portrait, she takes us to 16th-century Italy and the Medicis. This is by Maggie O’Farrell, who wrote Hamnet, which was a great success last year. Tell me a bit about the book and why it’s an exceptional audiobook. First up is The Marriage Portrait, which is a historical novel set in Renaissance Italy. ![]() Let’s go through the five you’ve picked out for us today. For the volume of audiobooks we cover, we like to have different points of view from different people with very different interests.īy Maggie O'Farrell & narrated by Genevieve Gaunt Read Because if I were writing all the reviews, they would probably all sound about the same. They’re based all over and they come with different interests, which makes the reviews different. At any given time, we have between 80 and 100 different reviewers who are listening for AudioFile in different subject areas. How many reviewers do you have listening to audiobooks through the year? These are excellent underlying books and then the extra is the experience that you get from the audio listening. There are certainly examples of books that are not so great that you can enjoy a lot listening to as an audiobook, but they’re not in this group. Presumably, the underlying book has to be good to be able to pull off an exceptional audiobook?Ībsolutely. Our AudioFile list is focused on the objective of an exceptional audio experience. ![]() That changes the criteria for what gets on the list, which is nice, because there are many, many lists of the best of everything at this time of year. It has to be exceptional listening it has to be an audio experience that people will remember. One of the things that we try to do with AudioFile’s list is to make sure it is audiocentric. We start with that group of exceptional audiobooks, and then try to bring that down into nine categories of: fiction, nonfiction & culture, memoir, biography & history, mystery, romance, sci fi, teens, and then children & family listening. Out of that number, maybe 200 or so are given our Earphones Awards, which means that the reviewer has designated them as exceptional. So far we’ve done 2,500 audiobook reviews. ![]() The books on our ‘best audiobooks of 2022’ list come from the many reviews that AudioFile has done during the year. Foreign Policy & International RelationsĬan you start by explaining how you set about choosing the best audiobooks of 2022?. ![]()
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