We Are Not Ourselves

About This Audiobook

Matthew Thomas’s *We Are Not Ourselves* isn’t just another sprawling family saga—it’s a novel that burrows deep into the bones of regret, ambition, and the slow-motion dismantling of a life you thought you knew. Centered on Eileen Tumulty, a fiercely driven Irish immigrant navigating Queens in the mid-20th century, the story twists toward the unthinkable when her husband’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis fractures their carefully constructed world. Thomas’s prose is unflinching yet tender, rendering the mundane horrors of caregiving with a rawness that lingers. The audiobook, narrated by Mare Winningham, amplifies this intimacy with a voice that shifts seamlessly from Eileen’s scrappy determination to the brittle exhaustion of her later years. There’s a tactile quality to Winningham’s performance—you can almost feel the weight of a grocery bag in Eileen’s hand or taste the bitterness of a muttered curse when the sink backs up yet again. The production’s clarity lets the story’s emotional currents ripple unobstructed, making it feel less like listening and more like overhearing a confession from a neighbor you’ve grown to love—and pity—by the final chapter.