By Geneva O’Hara
As a late-teenager, I went through an outstanding spell of insomnia. Bored and restless, I would comb through my Youtube recommendations until I found something I deemed a worthy soundtrack to lying on my back and staring at my ceiling. I became accustomed to several channels I rotated through as I felt their novelty shrink into the mundane, and come back to them again when I had forgotten their charm.
One was a French storyteller who lectured about history; one was a rendition of the first book of the Twilight Saga; and my favourite, a British man named Thomas on a channel with several other narrators who told sleep stories geared towards adults. I felt childish at times listening to these, but they were the most comforting. On nights when I dared not to overthink, Thomas’s stories were my first choice. Perhaps as a way of finding community in the stagnant late-night hours, I often scrolled through the comments before committing to my night’s rest. Underneath nearly all of the videos he narrated, there would be several comments along the lines of “A new story from Thomas? Looks like I’m going to sleep at 4pm today!” by viewers who shared a popular opinion that Thomas was the favoured narrator. I didn’t know why this was the case for everyone else, but I knew why I liked his work best. They were always the first suggested in my searches, so I had heard his narration before I even knew there were any other options. I became familiar with his style, and thus more comforted by it.
My mother Maria, a long-time fan of podcasts, meditations, and audiobooks, had similar thoughts on what makes a narrator great. When I asked her to sum up her thoughts, she replied, “A great narrator is successful at connecting you using only that one sense.”
She expanded that, similar to old-time radio, a narrator is really a performer. They vary styles between each book they perform; the different voices they do for separate characters rope you in rather than take you out by being too silly, which is particularly sensitive to genderbending; and a couple more rare treasures she told me about. It’s a special treat when the narrators have accents that match the characters or settings, like Maria’s re-read of Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez performed by a native Spanish speaker: “It adds authenticity and enriches it.”
Above all, however, Maria’s favourite is when authors of memoirs narrate the stories themselves. It’s the closest one can be to the story, she remarked: “It’s like sitting with them and having a hangout. It’s so personal.” She further explained how, because the style is so reflective, most of the authors will reach a point in their performance where their voice breaks: “It’s so genuine and heartfelt. All of a sudden there’ll be a moment, and it’s, just, wow… After hours and hours, this is what makes them break their voice a little bit.”
Audiobooks had a swift rise in popularity over the Covid-19 pandemic, during a series of unprecedented events and a period of never-before-seen isolation; a period, for many, of loneliness. Because of stay-at-home orders and boundaries to seeing one’s friends or community, audiobooks provided some company. Reading is comforting, and with an audiobook, one can be immersed in a story either by itself or while completing more uninteresting tasks, and without ever leaving the house. Last year, the audiobook retailer Audible capitalized on this idea by running a series of ads featuring people in their homes doing chores such as vacuuming while truly being in a far-off, distant fantasy because they were listening to an audiobook. During the pandemic, that fantasy was more far-off and distant than ever.
It’s a common misconception that listening to a book is less beneficial than reading it, and Maria used this practice as part of her defense. She detailed how in order to be engrossed in an audiobook, you need to be able to truly focus on it, keeping it at the forefront of any potential distractions. If one listens to a story while cleaning, for example, there’s no room to space out. It’s here and now, or nothing.
What makes an audiobook performer great? What makes them a performer at all? Technicalities such as genre and style are certainly important, and they fall as raindrops under a larger umbrella: Connection. Why does Maria love listening to memoir authors read their own stories? Why is Thomas my favourite narrator out of everyone on his channel? Why did a stream of people gravitate towards audiobooks between 2020 and 2022? It’s the same reason I whip my head around in a crowd when I hear a voice cutting through that sounds like my mother’s: We feel a connection. With audiobooks, the performer is that connection, bridging us into another world. A great audiobook performer is a common thread, binding us to the story through every word.
Surround Sound 