LEARNING TO TALK Stories

The multiple performances in this audiobook are uniformly adept, providing listeners the disarming experience of adults unflinchingly looking back at childhood. Mantel's seven short stories capture English childhood with an adult's reflective capacity and critical eye. The result is not quite a memoir; rather, it sounds like variations on the author's memories. Patrick Moy sets the tone while delivering the opening story of a mother and her various relationships after the father of her children leaves. "Learning to Talk" captures the vulnerability of a young student who struggles with elocution lessons; in "Third Floor Rising," an older child watches her mother at her job and observes how things work there. The collection is an enveloping listening experience devoid of sentimentality. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2022]