cover image Bonobo Handshake

Bonobo Handshake

Vanessa Woods, read by Justine Eyre, Tantor Media, unabridged, seven CDs, 8.5 hrs., $29.99 ISBN 978-1-4001-1745-1

Woods recounts her otherworldly experience of visiting a bonobo sanctuary in civil war–torn Congo in 2005. Stepping into the sanctuary, where healing abounds and the matriarchal community of bonobos has much to teach their animal caretakers, Woods finds her life forever altered. Justine Eyre displays her wide-ranging vocal ability as she slips effortlessly into Woods’s Australian accent, while peppering the reading with pitch-perfect African and French portrayals. Eyre recreates the scenes like a visual artist, nuanced shifts in her voice as planned out as every stroke of a brush. It’s easy to get lost in the story and hard to bring oneself back from this idyll. A Gotham hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 8). (May)