PAPER CAGE

Saskia Maarleveld is a bravura performer, particularly dazzling with European accents. Here she is performing in her own native New Zealand accents, and the result is unexpectedly confounding. While the consonants are familiar, the vowel sounds are so different from those in standard British or American English that the meaning is often hard to follow, particularly when a listener is also trying to keep up with fast-paced plot developments and to understand what each voice conveys about the speaker's race or class, which matter here. The story is gritty and painful, involving disappeared children, white prejudice against a Maori underclass, and a brave and undervalued police employee whose beloved mixed-race nephew is one of the stolen children. If only this audiobook came with subtitles. B.G. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2024]