Why listening to a book can be better than reading it

For many titles, audio narration conveys depth that text cannot

- Farhad Manjoo

NEW YORK • Over the past few years, I have been obsessed with the work of Australian novelist Liane Moriarty.

Yes, me and everyone else.

Ever since her 2014 blockbuster, Big Little Lies, Moriarty has become one of the publishing industry’s most dependable hitmakers.

Although her prose is not flashy and her subject matter seemingly pedestrian – Moriarty writes tightly plotted domestic dramas about middle- and upper-middleclass suburbanites – her observations are so precise, her characters’ psychology so well realised, that I often find her stories burrowing deep into my brain and taking up long, noisy residence there.

But now, a confession: I heap all this praise on Moriarty having technically never read a word she has written. Instead, I have only listened. The English audiobook versions of her novels are read by Caroline Lee, a narrator whose crystalline Australian cadences add to Moriarty’s stories what salt adds to a stew – necessary depth and dimension.