Conscience

A Novel

By: Alice Mattison

Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie, Xe Sands, JD Jackson

Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

Decades ago in Brooklyn, three girls demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and each followed a distinct path into adulthood. Helen became a violent revolutionary. Val wrote a controversial book, Bright Morning of Pain, which was essentially a novelization of Helen’s all-too-short but vibrant life. And Olive became an editor and writer, now comfortably settled with her husband, Griff, in modern-day New Haven.

When Olive is asked to write an essay about Val’s book, a work that attracts and repulses her in equal measure, doing so brings back to the forefront Olive and Griff’s tangled histories and their complicated reflections on that tumultuous time in their young lives. Things only become more fraught when Griff borrows Olive’s treasured first edition of the novel - and loses it. Then Griff’s quirky and audacious new colleague, Jean Argos, finds the book and begins reading it, setting off a series of events that will introduce new conflicts, tragedies, and friendships into the precarious balance of Olive and Griff’s once stable home.

Conscience, the dazzling new novel from award-winning author Alice Mattison, paints the nuanced relationships between the palpable personalities of Olive, Griff, and Jean with her signature wit and precision. And as Mattison explores the ways in which women make a difference - for good or ill - in the world, she elegantly weaves together the past and the present, and the political and the personal.

©2018 Alice Mattison (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Even better the second time

I had read the Kindle version (difficult, because I’m visually impaired) so was excited to listen to it. The readers matched my imagination. It’s a wonderful book,with a fascinating structure. It’s kind of a novel about a novel, and about the writing of novels. It is in three voices and takes place in two time periods. Yet, it’s easy to follow the story. There’s a mystery about it, with pieces slowly revealed throughout. And the characters, dialogue and relationships are complex and very real. I’ll probably listen again.

Terrible Performance

I don't usually complain about narrators. I'm fairly easy to please. But the narrator who performs the Jean Argos character inserts herself into the narrative in such a way that it completely undermines the book. Jean Argos is supposed to be a middle aged professional woman. But the narrator performs this character as if she's a 20-year-old breathless sorority girl. Every sentence is pronounced with an undercurrent of irony that has nothing to do with the text itself. This narrator should just read without inserting her "interpretation" of the text into everything she reads. It's awful. She managed to destroy this otherwise wonderful book for me.

Do yourself a favor and read this book in print. Don't buy this audio version!