Synopses & Reviews
"Woven into the middle of this captivating story is the most accurate depiction of the Chicago improv world that I've ever read. When you open the book, you can smell the stale beer and hear the clever quips."—Keegan-Michael Key, co-creator and co-star of the Peabody Award-winning Comedy Central series Key & Peele
"My first thought picking this book up was what if Binx Bolling [of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer] were really Catholic and winds up not glib in New Orleans but stuttering in Chicago? This is a completely errant, if not arrant, idea. The Voiceover Artist is a broad, ambitious, multifaceted, exacting set of portraits of some very twisted folks. They are their own analysts, viciously jockeying to win. Mr. Reidy can be frightening."—Padgett Powell, Whiting Award winner and author of six novels, including You & Me
Since his youth, Simon Davies has suffered from a crippling stutter inherited from his father. Overshadowed by his charming younger brother, Connor, Simon doesn't speak for eighteen years, but harbors a secret dream to become a famous voiceover artist. Once Simon finds his voice, he must learn to live alongside Connor, or continue to suffer silently on his own.
Dave Reidy's fiction has appeared in Granta and other journals. His first book, a collection of short stories about performers called Captive Audience, was named an Indie Next Notable Book by the American Booksellers Association. Reidy works at closerlook, inc., where he is the creative director. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Review
"The Voiceover Artist connects a community of disparate Chicagoansrising stars and fading elderly, drunks and dreamers, performers and muteswho yearn to find their voices and prove their value to the world. In a chain of intimate, first-person narratives, each character takes a turn at the microphone, confessing to the reader the secrets that separate them from the people they love. The Voiceover Artist is a compelling and unforgettable exploration of the power of the human voice and the human heart."
Valerie Laken, author of Dream House and Separate Kingdoms
"With this voice-driven (literally) novel about a young man (literally) finding his voice, Dave Reidy moves into the front ranks of Chicago writers, Catholic writers, writers about stuttering, and writers about sibling rivalry: a list that will give you some idea of his range and literary ranginess. The Voiceover Artist is winning, smart, and generous."
David Leavitt, two-time PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and author, most recently, of The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel (Bloomsbury)
"I often wonder what happens in a person's life to change him from a boy to a man. But brothers don't change from a brother into something else. They remain brothers. As a man, being and having a brother might start to feel claustrophobic. No way out. Dave Reidy's The Voiceover Artist examines this from every angle. This novel is brotherhood, is boyhood, is manhood. How poignant that these characters are searching for their voices while attempting to use these voices to make a living. There is family, life, raw realness to be found in their father's stutter, in their jealousy and love for each other, in every word of Reidy's book."
Lindsay Hunter, author of the novel Ugly Girls (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and the story collections Don't Kiss Me (FSG Originals) and Daddy's (featherproof)
"The Voiceover Artist is tender and beguiling. It is a wonderful story, told with artful directness about family, faith, forgiveness and the large human struggle we all face to find our true voice."
Scott Turow, author of ten best-selling works of fiction, including Presumed Innocent and Identical
"My first thought picking this book up was what if Binx Bolling [of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer] were really Catholic and winds up not glib in New Orleans but stuttering in Chicago? This is a completely errant, if not arrant, idea. The Voiceover Artist is a broad, ambitious, multifaceted, exacting set of portraits of some very twisted folk. They are their own analysts, viciously jockeying to win. Mr. Reidy can be frightening."
Padgett Powell, Whiting Award winner and author of six novels, including You and Me (Ecco)
"Woven into the middle of this captivating story is the most accurate depiction of the Chicago improv world that I've ever read. When you open the book, you can smell the stale beer and hear the clever quips."
Keegan-Michael Key, co-creator and co-star of the Peabody Award-winning Comedy Central series Key and Peele
Synopsis
Simon breaks his 18-year-long vow of silence in order to master his stutter, find love, and become a voiceover artist.
Synopsis
Since his youth, Simon Davies has suffered from a crippling stutter inherited from his father. Overshadowed by his charming younger brother, Connor, Simon doesn't speak for eighteen years, but harbors a secret dream to become a famous voiceover artist. Once Simon finds his voice, he must learn to live alongside Connor, or continue to suffer silently on his own.
Synopsis
Simon Davies suffers a crippling stutter inherited from his father. At the age of seven, he decides to stop speaking completelyeventually rendering his vocal cords useless from atrophy. Unable to speak, Simon finds solace in the voices piping through his bedside radio.
Eighteen years later, Simon rebuilds his voice and learns to mostly manage his stutter with a series of subtle tics hes developed to loosen his vocal cords. He moves to Chicago and pursues his lifelong dream of becoming a voice on the radioa voiceover artist. Meanwhile, his younger brother Connor, in every way more confident and charming than Simon, attempts to take his prodigious talent for improv comedy from the barroom stages of Chicago to the television studios of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Coming out of his years of silence, Simon seeks to balance his relationship with his brother, forcing Connor to examine what brotherhood and success mean to him.
Told in a series of first-person narratives by the characters who weave in and out of Simons life, The Voiceover Artist considers the complexities of family and celebrates the heart with which we fight to fulfill our dreams.
About the Author
Dave Reidys fiction has been published by
Granta and other journals. His first book,
Captive Audience, a collection of short stories about performers, was named an Indie Next Notable Book by the American Booksellers Association. Reidy works at closerlook, inc., where he is the Creative Director. He lives in Chicago.