The Testament of Mary

By: Colm Toibin

Narrated by: Meryl Streep

Length: 3 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

Audie Award Finalist, Solo Narration - Female, 2014

Audie Award Finalist, Literary Fiction, 2014

Meryl Streep’s performance of Colm Tóibín's acclaimed portrait of Mary is hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “an ideal audiobook,” presenting the three-time Academy Award-winner in “yet another great role.” Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary presents Mary as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity. In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son's crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel. They are her keepers, providing her with food and shelter and visiting her regularly. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was "worth it"; nor that the "group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye," were holy disciples. This woman who we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone, in a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.

Now Meryl Streep brings Tóibín's tour de force of imagination and language to unforgettable life with “simplicity, honesty, [and] a clarity that draws us into the emotional landscape of the book through the beauty of the writing,” writes Charles Isherwood in the New York Times Book Review. “Streep has an impressive ability to crest the structurally intricate sentences Tóibín has fashioned, which sometimes have the flowing, rhythmic cadences of certain passages in the Bible itself,” Isherwood writes of her performance. “Streep’s voice is familiar to generations of moviegoers, but its beauty as an instrument can be appreciated in this context as it often cannot be in films. … Tóibín's exquisite book [is] rendered by Streep with all its detached, quiet, consoling humanity intact.”

©2012 Colm Toibin (P)2013 Simon and Schuster Audio

Critic reviews

*"....beautiful and daring....Tóibín is at his lyrical best in The Testament of Mary....Originally performed as a one-woman show in Dublin, it takes its power from the surprises of its language, its almost shocking characterization, its austere refusal of consolation." (Mary Gordon, The New York Times Book Review)

" The Testament of Mary is sort of an ideal audiobook…. Streep's voice is familiar to generations of moviegoers, but its beauty as an instrument can be appreciated in this context as it often cannot be in films…. The result: simplicity, honesty, a clarity that draws us into the emotional landscape of the book through the beauty of the writing…. [O]ften there is a simmering intensity, as of overwhelming feeling held just barely in check. And there is, again, the sheer beauty of the voice, which has a cello-like resonance, slightly dark-timbered…. Streep rises to the heights of the most harrowing passages in the book with a stealth that takes you by surprise, so fluidly does she connect the subtle changes in feeling that overtake Mary as she tells of her confusion at what is happening, her fear when she hears that her son's death has been ordained, her horror at bearing witness to it." (Charles Isherwood, The New York Times Book Review)

Outstanding!

Story by Colm Toibin and performance by Meryl Streep, you simply doesn't get any better than this. Superb!

Dark Revelations from Christ's skeptical Mom.

A grudging, aging Mary recounts how desciples crafted the miracles of his birth and death.

Good listen

The narration was great. The story was a little slow at the start. It was very interesting after it got going.

Meryl Streep slays this book!

I am so glad I listened to this as an audiobook, I honestly don't think I would've fully understood and felt it just reading myself. Meryl Streep breathes such life into Mary, every emotion fully acted out and enhanced by her interpretation. This is really unmissable. The work and story is powerful. Colm Toibin proves again that he is truly incomparable.

Amazing Narration, Interesting Revisionist History

While this book is based on the fantasies in the writer mind, the narration by Meryl Streep makes it worth a listen.

Not Your Everyday Fare

Mary, the Mother of God, has become the woman I grew to believe in years before I found this book. The Testament of Mary is a very palatable, realistic approach to what probably really happened in the life of this woman, her sainted husband, and her son. I sincerely hope anyone who has ever questioned the existence of an historic person named Jesus of Nazareth listens to this beautiful, mesmerizing text. Meryl Streep kills.

Moving Performance

Both the premise of the book and the performance by Ms. Streep are fascinating. I just finished listening for the third time.

Meryl, Meryl, Mary.

I was captivated at the end with what Colm's Mary testified to. Grieving, Fear, Unknown.

heavy on the heart but loved it

To hear the story as it may have been experienced by Mary....heart rendering, intriguing, visual, visceral. and Meryl, pure perfection .

unpredictable

strange. reader was excellent choice dark n scared. great sub plot. neat perspective. first col in
tobin i have read