Quick Take
- Narration: Carly Simon narrates her own memoir, and her voice carries the same emotional directness that defined her songwriting across five decades.
- Themes: Fame and creative identity, love and loss, the texture of a life lived in music
- Mood: Nostalgic and candid, like sitting across from someone who has decided to stop leaving things out
- Verdict: For anyone who grew up with Simon’s music, this self-narrated memoir is an intimate companion to songs you thought you already understood.
Carly Simon narrating her own memoir is not a neutral artistic choice. It is the choice that makes everything else possible. Boys in the Trees, her 1978 album and the title she chose for her autobiography, has a particular quality to it: the title track is a song about children playing and time passing and the feeling of being suspended between the present and something that cannot be recovered. That quality, of looking at your own life with clarity and grief and tenderness simultaneously, is what the best memoir attempts. Simon delivers it.
The audiobook runs just over ten hours. The reviews available are largely from listeners encountering the album, which gives you a sense of the unusual position this recording occupies in Audible’s catalog. Boys in the Trees the album was released in 1978, during Simon’s marriage to James Taylor, and it is widely considered her strongest work. What the audio recording offers, with Simon herself speaking, is a sense of the woman behind the songs, the frame that gives the music its specific weight.
Our Take on Boys in the Trees
What reviewers consistently describe is a listening experience that reaches back through time. One listener noted they had owned the LP in 1979, given away their collection, and returned to this recording decades later. Another said certain tracks still reminded them of the significant influence the lyrics had during their years of early adulthood. That kind of testimony is not about nostalgia as passive sentiment. It is about music that did real work in people’s lives, and Simon’s narration of the stories behind those songs adds another layer to work that was already layered.
Simon’s voice has the same texture in speech that it has in song: direct, warm, slightly husky, and completely undefensive. She is not performing herself. Listeners who described the original album as Carly Simon at her peak are responding to that quality of presence, and it carries over into the spoken recording. James Taylor’s contributions to the album, including his voice and guitar on several tracks, are part of the story she tells, and she tells it without sentimentality and without score-settling, which takes real craft.
Why Listen to Boys in the Trees
The most compelling reason to listen is the pairing of voice and subject. When a writer reads their own work, there is always the question of whether they can step outside their investment in it enough to serve the listener. Simon does this well. Her pacing is unhurried and her delivery is conversational, which allows the listener to follow her into material that is personal without feeling intruded upon.
The album itself, which spawned the hit You Belong to Me along with the extraordinary title track, is the kind of record that tends to mark people permanently. One reviewer described it as containing songs that are timeless classics with a voice that is excellent and crystal clear. The memoir audio situates those songs inside the life that produced them, which changes what you hear when you go back to play them.
What to Watch For in Boys in the Trees
Without a detailed synopsis available, the precise shape and scope of the memoir is harder to map in advance. Listeners should go in knowing that this is an artist’s memoir rooted in a specific cultural moment, the New York and Los Angeles music world of the 1970s, and the pleasures of the audiobook are largely pleasures of immersion in that world rather than conventional narrative momentum. If you want a tightly plotted story of achievement and conflict, this may not provide it. If you want the texture of a life told by someone who lived it with full attention, this delivers.
The pricing structure is also worth noting: at $29.42, this sits outside the Audible Plus catalog and requires a credit or purchase. For fans who grew up with Simon’s music, that is likely not a deterrent. For listeners approaching the recording cold, it sets a higher bar for expectation.
Who Should Listen to Boys in the Trees
Listeners who have a personal history with Carly Simon’s catalog will find this recording rewarding in proportion to how much that music has meant to them. Fans of celebrity memoir in the self-narrated tradition, from Patti Smith to Keith Richards, will recognize the particular intimacy that comes when the subject is also the voice. Anyone curious about what the American singer-songwriter scene of the 1970s actually felt like from the inside should find enough here to hold their attention for ten hours. Listeners unfamiliar with Simon’s work who approach this as a general music memoir may want to spend time with the album first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Boys in the Trees an audiobook memoir or an audio album recording?
Based on the Audible listing, this is Carly Simon narrating her memoir of the same name. The album Boys in the Trees was released in 1978, but the audiobook is the autobiography she published decades later, covering her life and career.
Do you need to be a Carly Simon fan to get value from this recording?
Prior familiarity with Simon’s music deepens the experience considerably, particularly her connection to songs like the title track and You Belong to Me. Listeners coming in cold will still encounter a compelling narrator, but the emotional resonance is amplified by knowing the music.
How does Simon’s narration of her own memoir compare to a professionally cast audiobook?
Self-narrated celebrity memoir has a distinct quality that professional narration cannot replicate: the specific cadence and emotional texture of the person who lived the events. Simon’s voice brings the same directness her music is known for, which reviewers consistently respond to.
Is the $29.42 price point justified for this recording?
For committed Carly Simon fans, almost certainly yes. For casual listeners or those approaching the memoir without existing connection to the music, it is worth previewing a sample first to gauge whether the narrator’s voice and the subject matter justify the premium.
