His Favorites

A Novel

By: Kate Walbert

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

From the highly acclaimed, best-selling National Book Award finalist and author of A Short History of Women, a searing and timely novel about a teenage girl, a charismatic teacher, and a dark, open secret.

They were on a lark, three teenage girls speeding across the greens on a “borrowed” golf cart, at night, drunk. The cart crashes and one of the girls lands violently in the rough, killed instantly. The driver, Jo, flees the hometown that has turned against her and enrolls at a prestigious boarding school. Her past weighs on her. She is responsible for the death of her best friend. She has tipped her parents’ rocky marriage into demise. She is ready to begin again, far away from the accident.

Taut, propulsive and devastating, His Favorites reveals the interior life of a young woman determined to navigate the treachery in a new world. Told from her perspective many years later, the story cooly describes a series of shattering events and the system that failed to protect her. Walbert, who brilliantly explored a century of women’s struggles for rights and recognition in her award-winning A Short History of Women, limns the all-too-common violations of vulnerability and aspiration in the lives of young women in this suspenseful short novel. From the publisher of the classic A Separate Peace, His Favorites is an urgent book by a “wickedly smart writer” (The New York Times Book Review) whose work is “fascinating, moving and significant” (The Washington Post).

©2018 Kate Walbert (P)2018 Simon & Schuster

book review

This book was not interesting at all. I couldn't wait for it to be over.

Nothing to like here

This book is not well written and badly read. It sounds like the reader pauses to turn the page. The story has a ring of truth with pages and pages of going over everything. The repeating of "she said" and "he said" drove me to distraction. I think this book was written and chosen because of current events without coming clean about it. Who doesn't know someone who was taken advantage of a teacher or professor even if they thought it was what they craved?

Tedious

I chose this title because it was reviewed so positively by Ann Patchett but after listening I wonder if we read the same book. From the second chapter I was constantly tempted to ditch it but plodded through thinking it would redeem itself but nope. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if it was the droll and monotonous narration or the miserable story that was so void of variation of feeling . It’s just a sad slog with one saving grace; it’s short.

Boring

It's a short book that I don't think I'll continue. Nothing exciting and not even a little immersive.