Audiobook Review – Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson, Narrated by Robin Miles (3.5/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 2 hours and 43 minutes
Publisher:‎ HarperAudio
Release Date: August 09, 2016
ASIN: ‎B01FY8A1ZG
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed Audiobook from Library
Rating: 3.5/5 stars

“Running into a long-ago friend sets memories from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything – until it wasn’t.
For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant – a part of a future that belonged to them.

But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.”

Series Info/Source: I borrowed this as an audiobook from my library.

Audiobook Quality (4/5): The narrator does an excellent job reading this. No complaints about the audiobook quality.

Thoughts: I picked this up on a true whim. I wanted a very short story or novella to listen to on audiobook and a list online of good novellas recommended this one. It’s pretty far outside of something I would normally read.

This is the story of August, who moves back to Brooklyn with her dad and brother after the death of her mother. She makes friends with two other girls and all of their families have some pretty deep-seated issues. They are poor but don’t quite live in poverty. We get to watch as they go from carefree young girls who are oblivious to their situation and have big dreams for themselves, to pre-teens well aware of the dangers of men and drugs. They spend a lot of time trying to dodge them both with varying success.

This is a very good job of catching the mood of the 1970’s in Brooklyn. It’s lyrically written and feels more like a poem than a book. The feelings and stories are told more in broad strokes and can come off as a bit ambiguous.

What really drives the story forward is the vector of these girls’ lives. Will they realize their dreams and make it out of Brooklyn or will they succumb to the slow decay around them? Also, there is a subplot about August’s mom and what really happened to her (which I thought was a bit off and was talked about quite a bit in the story).

I liked the mood of the story and how it did an excellent job of making me feel like I was in 1970’s Brooklyn. However, I found the story a bit too ambiguous at times and after the fact struggled a bit to figure out exactly what happened to all the girls. However, I think that is just part of the style of this story…you are supposed to kind of wonder.

My Summary (3.5/5): Overall this was fine and I didn’t mind listening to it. It is beautifully written and does a good job of making 1970’s Brooklyn come alive. I found parts of the story to be a bit too ambiguous for me and you don’t get a lot of closure. It was fine and gave me something to listen to while I sorted out Legos for a couple hours. If you are into these kinds of coming of age stories or interested in 1970’s Brooklyn this might be worth a listen.