Crossings

Alex Landragin's debut novel unfolds across seven lifetimes and 150 years, weaving together three seemingly unconnected narratives: a Baudelaire ghost story written for an illiterate girl, a noir romance set against the shadowy world of rare manuscripts and literary intrigue, and the fantastical memoirs of a woman whose consciousness has migrated through generations. Set against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied Paris, the novel offers readers a structural choice: follow the chapters in sequence, or pursue an alternate ordering that reveals the story from an entirely different angle.

The dual-narrator arrangement proves essential here. Barrie Kreinik and Raphael Corkhill bring distinct vocal textures to narratives that span centuries and genres, helping listeners track the shifting identities and timelines that define the book's labyrinthine architecture. At over 24 hours, the runtime rewards patience, allowing the intricate connections between characters to accumulate with genuine weight. Audio suits Landragin's layered, manuscript-within-manuscript structure particularly well, the spoken word reinforcing the sense that these stories are being passed between voices across time.