The Waters: The audiobook

Day 53 in countdown to publication

When it comes to literature, there’s the physical book with its carefully constructed cover and all those words in fonts (those carefully chosen as well) on creamy white pages. You can hold all that in your hands! Then there’s the audiobook, which has a human voice, and that voice can bring a new beauty to a work of literature. And who doesn’t love being read to? I just got word that the actress Lili Taylor, has agreed to become the voice of The Waters.

She will be great. Her voice is soft and mesmerizing, elegant, and vulnerable. And midwestern—she was born and raised outside Chicago. And right after I got the news, I stepped outside, and a red-tailed hawk flew up in front of me and then sat in a tree regarding me with something like approval.

Maybe you’ve seen Lili Taylor in Six Feet Under or Mystic Pizza (she was so young then!), Household Saints (with Traci Ulman), or John Waters’ Pecker, or a hundred other high-profile projects. She is also on the board of the National Audubon Society, which is how I know she is is perfect for the project. I love hearing her in this Audubon video about growing native plants in the city:

Some people say that I should narrate my own audio book, and they are wrong. On the few occasions where I’ve had to record my own audio for projects, I have found that I am not the best reader for my work. While I get it “right” in the sense that I keep the level of drama where I want it, while I can be certain about which word to stress in a sentence, I really am not the best voice for my stories. I rush through them, as though apologizing for taking up people’s time.

For example, I wrote a story called “My Bliss,” about getting married to everything and everyone—it’s an absurdist story, a departure from my midwestern earnestness, and I haven’t figured out how to read it. But somebody played for me Christine Delaine’s reading of the audiobook of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, and she nails it. The story is hilarious in her telling.

In that book, Christine Delaine did an amazing job with all the different voices. She managed to keep the balance between tragedy and comedy just right all through the book, and I hope I will get to work with her again. If you love recorded books, please take a listen to that. And I can’t wait to hear Lili Taylor read the Waters. If you are an audiobook listener I hope you will let me know what you think!