For Sally Hepworth, author of The Younger Wife, her love of audiobooks is personal. As a mother to a child with learning disabilities, Hepworth finds herself a champion of the format—extolling its virtues while defending its flexibility for easy consumption. Here, she shares what listening has meant to her family, as well as how it does—or rather, doesn't—impact her style as a thriller author.
Can you talk about what listening to audiobooks means to your family?
It’s safe to say that The Hepworths are an audiobook family. We always have a book on the go in the car, on walks, and on our Alexa beside our beds. (Most nights you’ll hear one of us screaming at Alexa when she accidentally brings up my son’s book about space instead of my new Taylor Jenkins Reid novel.)
As someone who is passionate about literacy for people of all abilities, I am forever championing audiobooks. I have one child with a learning disability that makes reading very slow going, and for her, audiobooks have been the ticket to making reading pleasurable and encourage a lifelong love of reading.
And yes, listening to audiobooks is reading. While I don’t disregard the importance of eyeballing the written word for children learning to read, limiting the focus of books to spelling and grammar does both people and books a huge disservice. After all, books are about SO much more than spelling and grammar. Books allow us to travel, geographically and throughout time, to experience history and culture and real events as if we were right there. Books teach us empathy, allowing us not only to watch a person from the outside, but to step into their skin, to see out of their eyes, to hear their innermost thoughts. Books inspire us to be bigger, braver, kinder, and better than we are. These things have got to be just as important as spelling and grammar, right?
Do you think your storytelling or writing style is impacted by your love of audiobooks?
No. A story is a story, whether it is written or spoken. I love that it can be enjoyed in both formats, but it doesn’t change the way I write or formulate a story.
What do you think it is about the domestic drama that lends itself so well to this format?
With the right narrator or narrators, an audiobook can really ratchet up the tension of a suspenseful novel, taking the twists and turns to a new level. But I do think just about any book lends itself to this format easily.
