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Outstanding
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The Queen's Gambit Audiobook by Walter Tevis— narrated by Amy Landon
Walter Tevis's The Queen's Gambit follows Beth Harmon from a Kentucky orphanage into the heights of competitive chess, tangled the whole way with the pills she can't leave alone. It's a coming-of-age story about a girl whose genius doubles as her hiding place, and it reads like nothing else on the literary-fiction shelf.
Why the audiobook wins
Amy Landon, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, has the hardest job in this recording: making the interior experience of chess — a quiet, static game — feel as charged in your ears as a chase scene. She does it by tracking Beth Harmon's mind so tightly that the board's tension becomes audible, not through invented sound effects but through the pace and pressure of her voice as Beth calculates.
If you came to this after the Netflix adaptation, the audiobook is where you get the parts the show compressed — the orphanage years, the slower unraveling of Beth's addiction, the interior monologue that made her genius and her self-destruction feel like the same impulse. Landon's narration is patient in exactly the places the screen version had to rush.
Almost twelve hours in Beth's head, performed by a narrator who clearly understands what's at stake on that board. One credit, and you're back at the opening move.
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Audiobook questions
- Who narrates the The Queen's Gambit audiobook?
- Amy Landon narrates the audiobook edition of The Queen's Gambit.
- How long is the The Queen's Gambit audiobook?
- The audiobook runs 11 hr 53 min.
- Is the The Queen's Gambit audiobook worth listening to?
- We scored The Queen's Gambit 4.7 out of 5. Amy Landon, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, has the hardest job in this recording: making the interior experience of chess — a quiet, static game — feel as charged in your ears as a chase scene. She does it by tracking Beth Harmon's mind so tightly that the board's tension…
- Can I listen to The Queen's Gambit free with an Audible trial?
- Eligible new Audible members can use a free-trial credit to listen in the Audible app. Eligibility and current offer terms are set by Audible.
