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Droll Tales Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Witty and surreal tales that transcend rationality and illuminate our world, from America’s most original writer
Welcome to the world of Droll Tales, in which reality is a mutually agreed-upon illusion and life is painful, paradoxical, beautiful, and brief. With an oddball cast of characters who reappear in various guises throughout these interrelated stories, Smyles reveals an off-kilter world overlapping this one. And in giving us a tour of this enchanted, sometimes absurd place, with its own workings and ways of expression, she gives us a new way to understand our own.
A young suburban woman runs away to Europe to become a living statue; Mallarmé is at long last translated into pig Latin; a house full of surrealists compete for love on a reality TV show; a list of fortune-cookie messages reveals the inner world of the young man employed to write them; and a story of love and betrayal is told through the sentence diagrams on a fifth grader’s grammar test.
Romantic, dark, and ironic, Droll Tales is a book like none you have read. It is a joyful interrogation of the paradoxes underpinning life, a cabinet of curiosities, a philosophical vaudeville, a puzzle in fourteen pieces, and a tragicomic riddle articulated in Smyles’s singular style, with the mystery of the human heart at its center.
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“[Smyles] never loses sight of the dark paradox of life as painful, confusing, lonely but also ‘fun, beautiful and, briefly ours.’ The stories, varying in style, all surprise with cleverness."
— NPR
Quotes
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“Exhibits many elements of absurdist fiction: daft humor, illogical juxtapositions, the philosophizing of the banal, an obsession with meaninglessness.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Innovative—filled with surrealistic imagery, dark comedy, and people unmoored in their lives.”
— Foreword Reviews -
“[A] journey through the odder corners of existence.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“Reading Droll Tales, I am in awe of what a great great great great writer Iris Smyles is.”
— Patricia Marx, author of You Can Only Yell at Me for One Thing at a Time -
“A book full of wonders. Brilliant.”
— Frederic Tuten, author of Tintin in the New World -
“Droll Tales is dark, surreal, and very funny, one of the best combinations a reader could ask for.”
— Roz Chast, New York Times bestselling author
Awards
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Finalist for the 2022 Voice Arts Award for Humor
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About Iris Smyles
Iris Smyles is the author of several books, including Dating Tips for the Unemployed, which was a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Her short stories have been awarded the Geraldine Griffin Moore Award, the Adria Schwartz Award, and the Dorris Lipman Prize, among others.
About the Narrators
Elisa Medhus, MD, is an accomplished physician who has practiced internal medicine for more than thirty years. She is also the award-winning author of Raising Children Who Think for Themselves, Raising Everyday Heroes, and Hearing Is Believing.
Jonathan Davis has been inducted into the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame. A three-time recipient and fourteen-time nominee of the Audie Award, he has earned accolades for his narration from the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, the American Library Association, Booklist, the Audio Publishers Association, AudioFile magazine, and USA Today. He has narrated a variety of bestsellers and award-winners for top publishing houses. He also narrated over forty titles of the Star Wars franchise for Lucasfilm Ltd./PRH Audio, including several iconic movie tie-ins, has participated with Star Wars Celebration, and has built a significant fan base. His work as a narrator includes films and programming for National Geographic Television, NOVA, PBS, VH1, and Francis Ford Coppola. He grew up in Puerto Rico and speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew.
Tavia Gilbert is an acclaimed narrator of more than four hundred full-cast and multivoice audiobooks for virtually every publisher in the industry. Named the 2018 Voice of Choice by Booklist magazine, she is also winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. She has earned numerous Earphones Awards, a Voice Arts Award, and a Listen-Up Award. Audible.com has named her a Genre-Defining Narrator: Master of Memoir. In addition to voice acting, she is an accomplished producer, singer, and theater actor. She is also a producer, singer, photographer, and a writer, as well as the cofounder of a feminist publishing company, Animal Mineral.
Emily Lawrence, an actor and writer, is passionate about bringing stories to life. Her greatest strength as a performer is her ability to bring herself to the role, creating a wide range of emotionally resonant performances that leap off the page, stage, or screen. Her favorite characters are complicated, conflicted, and still searching for their inner truths. She has narrated more than 425 audiobooks, many of which were USA Today or New York Times bestsellers, and has also worked in film, television, and theater. Born and raised in New York, she moved to Los Angeles shortly after receiving her BFA in drama from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She also lived in London while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her greatest loves are acting and reading, so narrating audiobooks is a dream come true. Her other passions include traveling, LARPing, aerial circus, and chocolate.