June 10, 2024
Newman's (The Heavens) latest, imagining a world in which all the men mysteriously disappear, will sit poorly with some for its halfhearted acknowledgment that a Y chromosome-targeting apocalypse affects more than men--trans women and girls, cis boys, nonbinary and intersex people are zapped into a Boschian torment realm, too. And of course, it passes over trans men and other nonwomen without the damning chromosome. Unlike Brian K. Vaughn's Y: The Last Man, centering on a sole surviving cis man or Christina Sweeney-Baird's women protagonists in The End of Men, Newman's novel might have included those who'd had to fight for gender recognition. Rather, listeners follow cis white woman Jane through a long flashback to her disturbing history of sexual exploitation as both victim and victimizer and getting her perspective-from-privilege on American race relations when she meets Evangelyne, a charismatic, brilliant Black woman calling for change in the post-event power vacuum. Narrator Mia Barron summons authentic emotion and dramatic pacing for a performance that demands little accent craft or dialogue differentiation, rendering this hesitant approach to a familiar premise somewhat emboldened in audio. VERDICT: With earnestness undercut by conventionality, this is a strictly optional purchase.--Lauren Kage
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.