Find Me

Reader Zeller provides a heartfelt reading of Van den Berg’s dark yet inspiring apocalyptic novel. As a mysterious illness spreads across the world, 19-year-old protagonist Joy Jones is living as ward of the sinister Hospital, along with other immune children, subject to the strange experiments of Dr. Bek, whose interest in Joy extends beyond medical inquiry. Zeller’s modulations in tone and pace conjure up the emotional starkness of Joy’s world and her roller coaster of emotions. The lightness in Zeller’s voice conveys Joy’s youthful optimism when she’s thinking of her mother and her happiness when she is with her beau, Louis. But when Joy is sad, lost, and heavy with her reality, Zeller’s tone drops and her pace becomes slow and thick like the cough syrup that Joy drinks to numb herself to her world. Zeller is careful not to overwork her narration and at times adopts an evenness in her voice that highlights Joy’s desperation and the ambiguity of what is and is not true in her sterile world. [em]A Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover. (Feb.) [/em]