DIFFICULT WOMEN

This varied and fearless collection of stories makes for a challenging but fiercely rewarding audiobook. Roxane Gay’s attack on a story may drop you into the middle, may slip the bonds of realism, may take you a good stretch to figure out whether the narrator is sympathetic or terrifying. These are all good things. Gay is savvy about characters from all backgrounds, with an unusually global interest in the whole range of human behavior, straight, gay, violent, heroic, loving, sexual, shattering. The only drawback here is that narrator Robin Miles seems to respond to these powerful texts by trying to compete with them, rushing for no reason, swallowing syllables and words, and seeming to strive for eccentric placements of emphases instead of letting the stories shine. B.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2017]