In this deftly plotted and gripping psychological thriller, two women from different sides of the tracks meet by chance while celebrating their birthdays in a London pub. Alix Summer is a 45-year-old journalist who hosts a successful podcast and lives in a stylish townhouse with a built-in recording studio. Josie Fair is a wife and mother living in a small flat with her much older husband, Walter, who has grudgingly brought her out for a birthday meal. Having discovered they are not only the same age but were born in the same hospital, Alix and Josie strike up a friendship, with Alix inviting Josie to be interviewed on her podcast. Over hours of conversations, Josie shares an unsettling tale of how she came to be married to Walter.
Actors Nicola Walker and Louise Brealey take on the roles of Alix and Josie respectively, with Brealey bringing just the right amount of oddness to a woman whose fascination with her new friend’s perfect life borders on obsessive. After their first meeting, Josie “feels the gnawing sense of grief that she has experienced for most of her life rush through her” and comes to the realisation that “literally everything about [herself] is wrong and that she’s running out of time to make herself right”. Walker, meanwhile, captures Alix’s building disquiet at Josie’s manner and the inconsistencies in her story. Matters become dark when Josie turns up on her doorstep bloodied and bruised, her version of events bringing into question the nature of truth and who is manipulating whom.
• None of This Is True is available via Penguin Audio, 10hr 14min
Further listening
The Quest of the Silver Fleece
WEB Du Bois, Blackstone, 11hr, 58min
Kevin Kenerly narrates this landmark 1911 novel of Black America in which free-spirited Zora and her lover Bles grapple with hardship and poverty at the dawn of the 20th century.
The Rebels
Joshua Green, Penguin Audio, 10hr 33min
A survey of America’s Democratic left, as revealed through the careers of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Actor Philip Hernández reads.
