Thank You For Listening (2022) by Julia Whelan introduces us to Sewanee (Swan) Chester, a Julliard-trained actor who shifted focus to audiobook narration after a terrible accident left her facially scarred and certain her dreams of “making it” in Hollywood are over. Swan has done well, though, and takes narrating seriously, studying each book and giving it the attention that her previous roles would have taken. Her beloved grandmother is in a nursing home declining slowly, and then more rapidly, and her best friend, Adaku, is getting that success they both dreamed of.
When Swan goes to Vegas at the last minute, to present at an audio awards ceremony, she has an first-name only one-night stand with someone amazing, which she really hasn’t done since before the accident several years ago.
Back home, she gets an offer to narrate the final romance from a beloved author who has recently died–but she has to narrate with the number-one male narrator, Brock McNight (entire fan groups of women swoon over his voice). She hasn’t narrated romances in years–she doesn’t believe in the happily-ever-after anymore–but the offer is so good, she could make sure her grandmother gets into memory care at the same expensive place she lives and is used to. So she takes the offer, and Swan and Brock start emailing to coordinate their work on the novel. They connect anonymously, as they work chapter by chapter, which is released serially.
Of course, since this is a romantic comedy, Swan already knows Brock McNight in the flesh. Hilarity ensues, although Swan can’t see it initially, and she does get her happily-ever-after.
It was so funny, and Whelan did a great job with the best friend relationship with Adaku, and the grandmother-granddaughter relationship as well, and the grief Swan feels as her grandmother slips away into dementia.
I loved it, and don’t recall any explicit anti-fat bias, except perhaps some discussion of the diet culture that is endemic to Hollywood. I really appreciated that Whelan wrote Swan–the main character–having visible facial scarring and having to deal with that in such an appearance-based location and profession. Although they are not the same, there’s a lot of commonality between having visible scars and being fat.
Reading While Fat 