Multiple Narrators

[Bookworm_Girl]

I just started listening to Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. It goes back and forth between a female and male narrator depending on the point of view in the story. I find it annoying, and it takes you out of the story every time it switches.

Is this common to have multiple voices? Perhaps I've just never come across it before.

Do others like or hate it? Maybe it depends on the story.

[JSWolf]

I've listened to cast audiobooks, but never multiple narrators.

[Barbara1955]

Books I am listen to have Male & Female ... ALL read by MALE Whose Voice gets HIGH Pitched & Phy Hurts my hearing!

YES As much as they charge for Audibles they Should use both....

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've listened to cast audiobooks, but never multiple narrators.

Yes, me too. I do enjoy cast audiobooks. They can be fun and really bring a story to life. This experience was just not the same.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

Books I am listen to have Male & Female ... ALL read by MALE Whose Voice gets HIGH Pitched & Phy Hurts my hearing!

YES As much as they charge for Audibles they Should use both....

Are your books within a particular genre that you find it more common?

[Barbara1955]

Nope. Thankfully I Rarely run into to this.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

Yes, me too. I do enjoy cast audiobooks. They can be fun and really bring a story to life. This experience was just not the same.

The last full cast book I listened to was Ender's Game. It was excellent. It didn't feel like someone reading a book to you. It was engaging and the voices used were very well chosen.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I just started listening to Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. It goes back and forth between a female and male narrator depending on the point of view in the story. I find it annoying, and it takes you out of the story every time it switches.

Is this common to have multiple voices? Perhaps I've just never come across it before.

Do others like or hate it? Maybe it depends on the story.

I listen to a lot of books that alternate narrators by chapter as the POV shifts. I just listened to Erin Kelly's He Said/She Said, which does exactly that. I think it's generally effective and helps me remember whose version of events I am hearing.

It can get out of hand, though, after a certain point, but I think the problem is with the way the author has structured the story. Paula Hawkins's Into the Water is a mess, with half a dozen different narrators voicing about twice that many characters who have chapters told from their POV. It was hard to follow as an audiobook, but I believe it would have been even more difficult to read the text.

[copyrite]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I listen to a lot of books that alternate narrators by chapter as the POV shifts. I just listened to Erin Kelly's He Said/She Said, which does exactly that. I think it's generally effective and helps me remember whose version of events I am hearing.

It can get out of hand, though, after a certain point, but I think the problem is with the way the author has structured the story. Paula Hawkins's Into the Water is a mess, with half a dozen different narrators voicing about twice that many characters who have chapters told from their POV. It was hard to follow as an audiobook, but I believe it would have been even more difficult to read the text.

I don't mind two narrators - male, female - when there's a shifting POV. Makes it easier to remember whose POV I'm currently listening to.

Um, IMO, Into the Water is just a mess altogether with the number of characters in the book. I read the book; didn't listen to it. It was hard to remember who was who. With so many characters I didn't feel like I got to know any of them beyond a very superficial level.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I listen to a lot of books that alternate narrators by chapter as the POV shifts. I just listened to Erin Kelly's He Said/She Said, which does exactly that. I think it's generally effective and helps me remember whose version of events I am hearing.

It can get out of hand, though, after a certain point, but I think the problem is with the way the author has structured the story. Paula Hawkins's Into the Water is a mess, with half a dozen different narrators voicing about twice that many characters who have chapters told from their POV. It was hard to follow as an audiobook, but I believe it would have been even more difficult to read the text.

I looked at the book sample for He Said/She Said and it appears that each chapter alternates between him and her. It seems multiple narrators would be an effective method for that book. It looks like Into the Water also has each chapter represent a different character. Thanks for the book examples! They sound interesting so maybe I'll give one a try.

Manhattan Beach isn't structured that way so maybe that's why it seems more of a disjointed mess. It will be a long period of one narrator and then switch to another for only a short period and switch then back again all while in the same chapter.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I looked at the book sample for He Said/She Said and it appears that each chapter alternates between him and her. It seems multiple narrators would be an effective method for that book. It looks like Into the Water also has each chapter represent a different character. Thanks for the book examples! They sound interesting so maybe I'll give one a try.

Manhattan Beach isn't structured that way so maybe that's why it seems more of a disjointed mess. It will be a long period of one narrator and then switch to another for only a short period and switch then back again all while in the same chapter.

Oh, that would be a bit disconcerting; I don't think I've seen switches in any unit smaller than a chapter.

There's a version of The Godfather that uses multiple narrators in an odd way--the main narrator for the text does not read the dialog--all lines of dialog, and only the lines of dialog, are read by various other voice actors. It was jarring but I eventually got used to it, though I can't say I liked it.

Two classic epistolary novels that I think work great with multiple narrators are Dracula and The Woman in White.

[booklover6]

I just listened to several Christine Feehan books with a male doing all the male POV narration and dialogue, and the female doing the same with female narration and dialogue. The first one I listened to I found to be a bit jarring, but after that, I loved them. The rest of the series is done the same way, and I look forward to it.

[FizzyWater]

Some older Jayne Ann Krentz novels - I think it was the contemporary versions of the Arcane Society series - had two narrators. If I remember correctly, the male read the male parts and the female the female parts, and they alternated chapters reading the non-dialogue. What I remember thinking is that one of the narrators was much better than the other. So it *was* distracting, but I can't say whether it was only because they were unevenly matched.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Interesting observation. I think that could be the case here. I like the narrators independently. Their styles just don't match.

[pwalker8]

Some of the Tamara Pierce books use the multi-cast reading method. I got the impression that it was kind of a fan/pro thing rather than a group of professional voice actors. It wasn't bad and it suited the books in question (basically young adult with a lot of characters). The Wheel of Time series uses dual readers, male and female. I thought that it worked pretty well, at least in the first two books.