Audiobook narrator tells story of her own
Prolific professional Whelan discovered recording dynamics perfect for rom-com
Julia Whelan climbed into the double-walled, foam-insulated booth in her home office near Palm Springs, California. In preparation, she had refrained from alcohol the night before, had avoided dairy since waking at 6 a.m. and had run through the humming and vocalizing of her warmup exercises.
Her glass filled with water, her Vaseline lip therapy at hand, she was ready to work. So was the man wielding the jackhammer in her backyard, a reminder of what it means to be a victim of your own success.
Whelan, 38, is the soothing, assured female voice behind Gillian Flynn’s thriller “Gone Girl,”
Tara Westover’s memoir “Educated” and more than 400 other audiobooks, as well as the narrated versions of many articles for New York, The New Yorker and other magazines. She has been so prolific that she and her husband splurged on a backyard remodel, which included blasting a hole in the ground for a swimming pool. The problem is that in her business, quiet is an occupational necessity.
A former child actor, Whelan was 15 when she was cast in the ABC drama “Once and Again,” Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz’s follow-up to “thirtysomething.” Then as a 30-something herself, Whelan found she could more successfully blend personal happiness and professional achievement
if she moved her performances from the stage to the page. She has emerged as one of Audible’s most popular narrators, said Diana Dapito, the audio company’s head of consumer content.
Bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid became friends with Whelan when she narrated Reid’s 2015 novel, “Maybe in Another Life.” A few years later, when plans were underway for the audio version of her 2017 book “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” Reid let her publisher know that she wanted Whelan for one of the characters. She was told “don’t hold your breath,” that Whelan was so sought after that six months’ notice was required.
This delighted Reid. “Who doesn’t like to see their friends in such high demand?” she said. (Reid called in a favor and booked Whelan to help narrate.)
The range of Whelan’s work is sweeping. Between bursts of construction, she recorded “pickup” for an article that would appear in The Atlantic. This means that she had already narrated the piece but was redoing a few sentences in which she had misread or mispronounced words.
Then she turned to the narration of a forthcoming book. It is a novel Whelan herself has written, “Thank You for Listening,” which is set in the audio industry and centers on a successful woman who lives her life mostly by voicing the words and experiences of others — that is, until she gets paired to read a famous romance novelist’s final book with Brock, an enigmatic male audiobook narrator.
“Question,” Whelan said into her microphone, speaking as Sewanee, her female protagonist, who is texting Brock. “Any interest in doing something other than romance? A friend is casting a Clancyesque book and needs an alpha assassin sound.” She stopped the recording, hit rewind and reread a passage she garbled.
Her narrating voice, slightly different from her regular speech, is crisp and low-pitched. There is no singsong, no upspeak. Her narration is a raised eyebrow and a tilt of the head.
“I have an absolute voice crush on her,” said Olivia Nuzzi, New York magazine’s Washington correspondent whose work has been narrated by Whelan. “There is some Joan
Didion quality to her voice, detached but not uninterested, with a conspiratorial tone that makes her a very compelling storyteller.”
Whelan wanted to write “Thank You for Listening,” recently released by Avon, because the heard-but-notseen dynamics of audio is, she said, “perfect for rom-com material.” It also was an opportunity to peek into the audiobook world.
Once she has taken on a
project, she reads through the book once or twice, deciding on themes to highlight when she gets into the recording booth by using different tones and accents, and emphasizing certain words.
“Narrating a book really is a performance,” she said, “and it can be harder to do than acting, because I can’t use my eyes or a facial expressions to convey something to the audience.”
Just before the pandemic, she began “Thank You for Listening,” combining her writing with the experiences she has
collected as a narrator.
Writers say that Whelan has helped them understand their own work.
“When I listen to Julia read my stories, it sounds like she is calling you over to tell you a great story,” Nuzzi said. “When I write now, I try to think like that, that I am calling a reader over to tell them a great story. It has completely changed my approach.”
When Flynn was preparing to write the screenplay for the film adaptation of “Gone Girl,” she decided against rereading the book, opting instead to listen to the narration. “Julia gave me the benefit of listening to Amy and seeing the world through her eyes,” Flynn said.
Whelan said that she also learns about her writing when she experiences it as a narrator. “There is something about it that changes when you’re performing it,” she said. “I read the book out loud during every stage of its revisions, but it’s different when you sit down and have the microphone in front of you, when I finally am inhabiting all the characters and the story comes to life.”