Audiobooks Artistry
Just because he’s a man of the boards from the U.K. with Shakespearean pedigree doesn’t mean he’ll break out the dramatic shout-voice à la the great Richards of stage and screen — Harris and Burton — thus blowing out your headphones and maybe an eardrum. (Oh to hear the bellowing of “A Man Called Horse” one more time.)
No, Gerard Doyle is not bombastic, merely a pro at his craft across audiobook genres from lit to Y.A. to kid stuff, raking in AudioFile magazine’s Earphones Awards for his many credits, which number some 400, according to the Amagansett Library, where he’ll speak about his career on Friday at 6:30 p.m.
On the lower-brow front, Mr. Doyle has worked on this side of the pond on TV shows like “New York Undercover” and “Law & Order,” though that’s another story, no doubt happily related should you be so kind as to attend.
Whitehead Tapped — Again
The faceless compiler of this column wonders if he should simply hold off till Colson Whitehead wins the thing. Be that as it may, the new king of the Sag Harbor writers (even if they just stop by for a week in the summer to visit family) is back at it, awards-wise, getting a long-list nod from the readers, critics, and eggheads at the National Book Foundation for his latest novel, “The Nickel Boys.”
Grimly set at a reform school in the Jim Crow-era Deep South, it’s a bit less fabulist than his previous, “The Underground Railroad,” which won a 2016 National Book Award for fiction and a 2017 Pulitzer Prize. This year’s National Book Awards will be announced at a ceremony on Nov. 20 in Manhattan.