The Feral Detective

A Novel

By: Jonathan Lethem

Narrated by: Zosia Mamet

Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

Jonathan Lethem’s first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn.

“One of America’s greatest storytellers.” (Washington Post)

Phoebe Siegler first meets Charles Heist in a shabby trailer on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. She’s looking for her friend’s missing daughter, Arabella, and hires Heist to help. A laconic loner who keeps his pet opossum in a desk drawer, Heist intrigues the sarcastic and garrulous Phoebe. Reluctantly, he agrees to help. The unlikely pair navigates the enclaves of desert-dwelling vagabonds and finds Arabella is in serious trouble - caught in the middle of a violent standoff that only Heist, mysteriously, can end.

Phoebe’s trip to the desert was always going to be strange, but it was never supposed to be dangerous....

Jonathan Lethem’s first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn, The Feral Detective is a singular achievement by one of our greatest writers.

Bonus: Stay tuned after the end of the audiobook to hear an exclusive conversation between Zosia Mamet and Jonathan Lethem.

©2018 Jonathan Lethem (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

the writing is good

the writing is good and so is the story. the narration was excellent, which was sort of a surprise to me

Phenomenal

The Feral Detective is a Lethem masterwork. Zosia Mamet's performance is extraordinary. Mesmerizing and thrilling. This has got to be one of the best audiobooks out there.

Amusing story but a flawed reading

The reader's voice has a youthful, sultry character that fits the story's narrator well. But something is off. At times the reader seems to mumble — or at least speak unclearly enough as to be hard understand. She also tends to read in a monotone that makes it difficult to separate what the narrator says out loud in dialogue from the narrator's running commentary on her dialogue. In truth, I could not easily differentiate where the narrator's spoken dialogue stared and ended without looking at the punctuation in the book.

This is a comic detective story, and pretty whacky, in a playful, amusing way. But the weird turns in the story line make it all the harder to follow the action and details when the reader isn't always annunciating clearly. I gave up on listening and wound up reading the last half of the book.

As for the story itself, I'm glad I finished. The comic ride had its moments. But overall, I learned the genre of comic detective stories isn't going to become one of my favorites.

Horrible narrator

Can't tell how good the story is because the narrator is terrible. Can't understand her monotone and her voice is like she's half asleep. Not only that, she was putting me to sleep. I listened for a couple hours and can't remember a single thing about the story, only how irritating her voice is. I'm returning this book!

great velocity

listened to it in the desert and thought it captured the scene. the narrator is a brilliant, delicious bitch, so NY. her sweetheart is a miracle. Trump election is a great backdrop.

Great story and great narration.

Lethem's main character (Phoebe) heads West, from NYC, in search of a young runaway. Under the guidance of detective Charles Heist they head past the city streets, past the makeshift shelters on the edge of town and out into the desert, where they search among the small societies and groups that exist beyond the fringe of society. Good and evil abound.

The Feral Detective must battle the king of the Bear Clan, in a torchlit fight to the death to win back the lost / escaped young girl for whom Phoebe is searching. Other entanglements follow as the story works its adventurous way through the Bear Clan, the Rabbit Clan and remote and isolated Monster truck rallies to conclude their story

I thought the narration was great, bringing life, attitude and personality to our storyteller -- Phoebe.

Disappointed

This is so difficult to listen to, I’m going to return this book. It is my first return after many years of enjoying audible book. I believe Ms Mamet may have been suffering a cold or some speech impediment. Her cracked voice is very unpleasant to listen to. I know Ms Mamet as one of the best stars on Girls, but this performance does damage to her
Stellar reputation

Narrator is awesome!

Wonderful book with great narration. I love Jonathan Lethem’s books. This one is the best.

Great story, abysmal narration

The laconic, vacuous vocal -fry affectation of Mamet's reading was infuriating. She did not tell the story, she simply read it aloud.
Lethem's characters. language, and story are, as usual, amazing. Enough to keep me engaged in spite of the performance.
There is a great interview with Lethem at the end, which not even Mamet could ruin with her shallow commentary. Apparently, it's her voice in the real world as well.

Good story, bad narrator

I almost bailed on this book after the first few paragraphs. As others have mentioned the narrator's affectless delivery and vocal fry made her hard to listen to. I think she was chosen to give the main character a modern, nihilistic voice, but it was an assault on my ears. In addition, she lacked breath control and faded off into a low grumble at the end of most sentences. She did not have the range to adequately handle dialog. She was unable to provide enough differentiation between speakers and, since she had already forced her voice to the bottom of its natural pitch range, she couldn't go deeper to simulate a male voice, so she got quieter and flatter instead. This made the male characters seem weak and one-dimensional.

The choice to go with a popular actress instead of a professional narrator made me angry. Here's why: Most book narrators I've experienced are male, regardless of the gender of the primary characters or dialog speakers. Using an actress with limited vocal skills as a narrator means that she will get worse reviews than a professional narrator and the gender inequality in audio book narration will be reinforced, as publishers will likely look at these negative ratings on performance and at least partially attribute it to the narrator's gender. I think Zosia Mamet not only took away an opportunity for a professional female narrator but also made it less likely there will be more opportunities for female narrators in the future.

Fortunately, I was able to make listening bearable by increasing the reading speed to 1.5x. It got rid of a lot of the drag in her speech and raised her pitch to where it probably should have been in the first place. It helped a lot with the grinding noise of her vocal fry. After that I found the book unusual and thought provoking and I was glad I found a way to stick with it. The author had many intriguing insights and the writing was sophisticated and professional. I think it's a shame that success and popularity of this well-written book, and the reader's enjoyment of it will suffer from the terrible choice of narrator. The author deserved better.