Audiobook roundup

“Educated” by Tara Westover, narrated by Julia Whelan, Random House Audio, 12:10

Few narrators can match Julia Whelan for the ease with which she draws listeners into a story. AudioFile magazine has given her an award for narration every year since 2013. Her performance on Tara Westover’s beautiful memoir, “Educated,” continues this streak of near-perfect performances. Whelan’s turn as the sassy voice of Amy Elliott Dunne in Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” was my favorite among her works, but her narration on “Educated” almost upstages that achievement. It doesn’t hurt that Westover’s is such a compelling story.

The youngest of seven siblings in a rural Idaho family, Tara comes to realize that there’s something amiss in her parents’ worldview. Her father, obsessed with the end of days and fearing an onslaught of government agents, has a peculiar take on Mormonism — at one point, he decides milk is evil. The father considers book learning unnecessary and recruits his children — even 10-year-old Tara — to work in his scrap yard, where serious injuries are commonplace. When a brother turns abusive, Tara has no defender. The miracle here is that Westover breaks away, educates herself and manages to find a place at a university even though she’s frightfully ignorant: She’s never heard of the Holocaust. That she finds her way at all is an accomplishment. That she goes on to earn a doctorate in history at Cambridge University is extraordinary.

“West” By Carys Davies, narrated by Robert Fass, HighBridge, 3:30

In the opening chapter of Carys Davies’ short, elegant novel, “West,” narrator Robert Fass takes on three voices: Pennsylvania mule breeder Cy Bellman as he explains the journey he’s taking; Bellman’s sister Julie, her voice an irritable scratch; and Bellman’s 10-year-old daughter, Bess, full of childish concern and curiosity. It’s clear that with Fass in charge, there’s no need for a full cast to tell the story of Bellman’s quixotic hunt for nonexistent beasts. Fass lives up to his many awards, including the Library Journal’s 2017 Best Audiobook Award for Calvin Trillin’s “Killings.”

In this story, Bellman is beguiled by a newspaper account of bones and tusks discovered in a Kentucky swamp. Davies writes, “The giant beasts drifted across his mind like the vast creature-shaped clouds he saw when he stood in the yard behind the house and tipped his head up to the sky.” The idea of these lumbering giants impels him westward to find them. “I have to go. I have to go and see. I don’t know what else to tell you,” Bellman says to his irritated sister. “You could say you’re not going,” his sister answers. It can’t be an accident that another Bellman is the main character in a different misguided hunt for a mythical beast: Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark.” That Bellman is leaving his daughter unprotected doesn’t occur to him until he’s nearly crossed the continent. That she finds the help she needs is her father’s final grace.

“The Mars Room” by Rachel Kushner, narrated by Kushner, Simon & Schuster Audio, 9:41

Nothing in the propulsive energy of Rachel Kushner’s previous novel, “The Flamethrowers,” led me to conjure the voice that narrates her new book, “The Mars Room.” She sounds like a 13-year-old. It’s not a terrible fit for the main character, 29-year-old Romy Hall, who’s serving two consecutive life terms for the murder of her stalker. Too bad Romy also sounds like Laura Lipp, the nonstop talker who keeps trying to explain why she killed her baby — who sounds no different from Conan, the transgender inmate with a beard who emerges as a protector. Kushner is not a gifted reader. She is, however, a wonderful writer.

The world she creates is full of odd details of prison life, sometimes provided in lists like poems. There’s a list of rules for the visiting room: “Holding hands is sustained contact and not tolerated/ No high fives/ No hands under the table during your visit. … No hands in pockets/ No yelling . ... / No ‘horse play’/ No loud laughing or boisterousness/ Keep crying to a minimum.” Romy had worked in a strip club called The Mars Room, a place so bargain-basement, she says, “if you showered, you had a competitive edge.” The guards in prison lecture inmates, “Your situation is due one hundred percent to choices you made,” but it’s clear there are few real choices here.