Quick Take
- Narration: Cynthia Erivo reads her own work with a voice that Booklist called obviously superb, mellifluous, emotionally present, and precisely calibrated in its quietness.
- Themes: Embracing being too much, the discipline of becoming, resilience through performance
- Mood: Intimate and quietly inspiring, like a letter from someone who has been through something real
- Verdict: A short, generous listen that earns its emotional weight through specificity rather than inspiration-speak.
I listened to Simply More on a Sunday morning when I had about four hours and no particular agenda, the right conditions for something that runs under four hours and asks you to sit with its ideas rather than rush past them. Cynthia Erivo’s voice is a known quantity at this point; she is one of the most celebrated performers working across stage and screen, and a Tony, Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar nomination record that should statistically not belong to a single person. What I was not prepared for was how much the book sounds like she is actually talking to you rather than performing for an audience.
That distinction matters. Celebrity memoirs and inspiration books are a genre with a well-established distance between the public voice and the listening experience, you hear someone telling you who they are rather than showing you. Erivo does something different. AudioFile’s review described her as baring her soul and asking listeners not just to hear but to reflect, and that is accurate in a way that phrase rarely is. The quiet confidence of the narration comes from the same place as the candor of the writing: she is not trying to impress you. She is trying to tell you something true.
Our Take on Simply More
The book is structured as a series of short vignettes rather than a chronological career narrative. Each chapter is brief and focused on a specific moment or practice, a piece of hard-won wisdom extracted from the experience of running marathons, learning Wicked a decade before she needed it, navigating the expectations placed on a Black British woman in a predominantly white performing arts world. Vulture’s review noted moments of genuine realness, and that is where the book is best: not in the motivational framing but in the specifics underneath it.
The Wicked anecdote that opens the marketing for this book is genuinely instructive. Erivo learned the score to a show she had not yet been cast in, not as a strategy but as a kind of faith in what was possible. That the role eventually came to her, and that those years of preparation meant she was ready when it did, is not a story about manifestation or positive thinking. It is a story about preparation as a form of commitment, and Erivo is careful not to strip out the decade of uncertainty between those two points.
Why Listen to Simply More
Because the running time rewards rather than punishes the format. At under four hours, this is a book that you can absorb completely in a single listening session, and the vignette structure makes it possible to return to individual chapters the way you might return to specific entries in a journal. The ideas are not novel, embodied wisdom, the value of process over outcome, the importance of not shrinking yourself, but they are grounded in specific theatrical and athletic experience in a way that keeps them from evaporating into generic self-help vapor.
One reviewer noted that the short chapters contain loving life messages, which slightly undersells the emotional complexity at work but accurately captures the book’s warmth. Erivo is not writing from a distance. She is writing from inside the experiences she describes, and that proximity gives the advice texture it would not otherwise have.
What to Watch For in Simply More
The book is explicitly focused on Erivo’s professional and performing life, with limited attention to her personal history outside those contexts. One reviewer who wanted more personal detail about her life outside the stage found the focus limiting. If you are coming to this as a fan looking for biographical breadth, the book is narrower than you might expect. It is a book about craft, discipline, and identity as they intersect in a performing life, not a comprehensive memoir.
The short chapters also mean that some ideas receive less development than they might warrant. The section on marathon running as a metaphor for artistic endurance is compelling but brief. Listeners who prefer their nonfiction to excavate a few ideas deeply rather than touching many ideas briefly may find the format slightly frustrating.
Who Should Listen to Simply More
Fans of Erivo’s work who want a more intimate understanding of how she approaches performance and creative life. Listeners drawn to actor-authored books like Viola Davis’s Finding Me or Gabrielle Union’s We’re Going to Need More Wine will find this in the same spirit, if quieter and more focused on craft than narrative. Those looking for a brief, honest, emotionally intelligent listen that covers the gap between aspiration and actual sustained effort will find something worth returning to here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Simply More cover Erivo’s experience filming Wicked specifically, or is the Wicked reference more general?
The Wicked connection is used as a framing device for the book’s central theme about preparation and readiness. The book is not a behind-the-scenes account of the film but a series of life lessons from across Erivo’s career.
How does Erivo’s narration compare to her speaking voice in interviews?
AudioFile described her reading voice as mellifluous with quiet confidence, and most listeners find it consistent with her public interview presence but more intimate. She reads with less performed brightness and more genuine reflectiveness.
Is this book appropriate for listeners who are not already familiar with Erivo’s work?
Yes. The book does not require prior knowledge of her career to be meaningful. The theatrical and performance context is provided within the text, and the life lessons are general enough to resonate independently of familiarity with her specific shows or films.
At under four hours, does Simply More feel complete or like an extended essay rather than a full book?
It reads as a complete, intentionally short book rather than a truncated one. The vignette structure is designed for the length, and the ideas are developed enough to justify the format. Listeners expecting a full memoir will find it brief; listeners approaching it as a focused personal essay collection will find it satisfying.
