See Now Then: A Novel

Literary critics that have hailed Kincaid’s fiction can add another accolade to the author’s list: stellar audiobook narration. In this audio edition of her slender, long-awaited new novel, Kincaid is on secure footing as narrator, her lilting voice giving life to her prose. Her heroine is a writer who marries and has children with a self-centered musician who secretly dreams of killing her and decapitating their son, Heracles. The novel’s abrupt shifts between past and present can be occasionally jarring for the print reader, as the nonlinear plot collapses current and decades-old events into an almost stream-of-consciousness story of family and betrayal. In the audiobook, the same material can easily be followed, and Kincaid’s skill as a raconteur draws listeners into her story. An FSG hardcover. (Feb.)