Exceptional, if a bit odd voice. I can see why this puts some people off. However, on audio, this really shines. The narrator is exceptional and just gets the cadence created here. It’s natural and fluid. I struggle to suggest another book with this kind of anchoring in time and place; certainly not with this kind of voice. It’s not as though Whitehead struggled with voice previously either, and this feels revelatory. My favourite part of it by far and away.

It’s also true, I think, that people who criticize the plot have some standing here. In a book with a blurb and cover that sort of looks like genre fiction, the plot is a fairly fluid thing. It feels like a pretence for some of the most loved and spotlighted characters to be studied, and by proxy, make the areas they frequent, characters themselves. And so it’s hard for me to penalize it much as I genuinely was in awe in some of the descriptions and playfulness of the voice. You really do feel like you’re learning about the area.

There are slight intrusions that other voices could never pull off. For instance, a character feels eyes on his back and turns around, encounters a woman reacting to him with suspicious disdain, and the voice says, quickly, “That why you don’t turn around.” It’s weird sometimes to examine who this story is for, kind of? But then the next interaction or description of nothing becomes an absolute gem your mind sinks it’s meat into and who cares?

This feels like a reread to me. There’s a quality here that may not translate to the page for me, but then again, perhaps it will. Maybe there’s even more to chew on, especially now that I’ve got that voice in my head already.