Booth

By: Karen Joy Fowler

Narrated by: January LaVoy

Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

Best Book of the Year
Real Simple • AARP • USA Today

Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize

From the Man Booker finalist and bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic and intimate novel about the family behind one of the most infamous figures in American history: John Wilkes Booth.

In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over the course of the next sixteen years. Junius Booth—breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one—is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.

As the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden lives to cement their place as one of the country’s leading theatrical families. But behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced, multiple scandals, family triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an early prophecy.

Booth is a startling portrait of a country in the throes of change and a vivid exploration of the ties that make, and break, a family.

©2022 Karen Joy Fowler (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

Most Anticipated Books 2022

Kirkus Reviews • Entertainment Weekly • Virginia Living • Veranda • The Millions • Medium • CNN

One of New York Post’s Best Books of the Month

"Fowler’s riveting saga explores these strains of familial devotion and sorrow connecting the colorful Booth brothers and sisters."–Washington Post

"An ambitious novel . . . Slow-burning and rich, it illuminates America’s core contradictions."—People Magazine

"Vignetted at the edges, full of portents, omens and mysterious reversals of fate . . . [Fowler’s] sentences often sing.”–The New York Times Book Review

Fascinating

It’s amazing to see the echoes of similarities of the self righteous strains of thought still prevalent in our society today.

It’s also fascinating to learn of this enigmatic family who held such different views than their famous son.

I was riveted from start to end.

History comes alive

Beautifully written beautifully narrated. A story we have all known little bits of, this fleshes it out and is completely absorbing and interesting. Enjoyed it start to finish

Not what I was hoping for

Lots of history in this novel but got kind of boring at times. I was hoping for more. I’ll give it a 3.5 total!!!

Detached

I felt rather detached from this story because Fowler does much more telling than showing so I felt I never got inside the characters’ heads. How much more interesting if she had focused on ONE Booth. She said she didn’t want to write a book about John Wilkes Booth so perhaps she shod have stuck with just Edwin or just Asia. Very disappointing to this reader.

Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

If you condemn the sinner as simply insane you do yourself an injustice. You allow yourself the belief that devastating tragedy happened because of a momentary imbalance or mental illness. But the truth is so much more complex and can’t be portrayed in a headline on social media. Karen Joy Fowler’s BOOTH shows us the life and times of the booth family. It is a time that eerily resembles our own and if it doesn’t scare you how easily one domino hits the next, hits the next, hits the next until the world is changed forever, then I’m unsure if we’ll be able to stop the next, and the next, and the next great tragedy. If we don’t make an effort to communicate (listening as well as speaking) with those we vehemently disagree with, we will one day again realize we missed our chance to stop a tragedy.

Rambling

I don't even recall hearing thr Booth name until late in this rambling story. So much of the farm life of this family with kids being born and dying young, of slaves and absent father then suddenly translated to the city where their story continues. There is a sudden, passing, refrance to a depressive Lincoln and then we are back with this family and o and on and on! There is an oblique, passing, reference to Wilkes; not John Wilkes, but it's just a flash in the pan, as other characters take center stage. While the character's are interesting.,and well developed one has to wonder what they are being developed for or why the Wikes character isn't being developed? He is,after all, a principle character in this story.

I could not maintain an interest in this rambling story that does not appeR to be coming together any time soon.

"Charlotte. South Carolina"

It takes about halfway through the book for the narrative to evolve from the Booth children frolicking and get to the good stuff. I know this is fiction, but who edited this? Someone or other was sent to med school in Charlotte, South Carolina, and I just lost all confidence that any of these could be remotely true or based on any kind of research.

A fascinating story

I am not sure it would be so satisfying to someone anxious to hurry up and get to the grown-up John Wilkes. Nor someone less interested in the theatrical life. But being immersed in the life of a famous family in Baltimore and a farm nearby in the first half of the 19th century with the Civil War looming is totally fascinating to me. The author also sprinkles in little vignettes of Lincoln’s parallel life from time to time. So much going on. Not as lyrically written as Hamnet but that same feeling of immersion. I don’t mind the slow reveal at all.

The Booth Family

fact, Fiction, or Mythology??
Frederick, Mary Ann, Elizabeth, Henry, Junius, Rosalie, Edwin,Asia, John, and Joe Booth. The author does an excellent job of telling the Booth story without dwelling on John Wilkes Booth. This Family was well known especially their father who was acclaimed throughout .America and England. Fascinating research brought the whole family to life! Highly recommended.

Spellbinding

The narration is perfect and the story is paced so brilliantly that I consumed this book in 24 hours. One of my top books of 2022!