Narrator Julia Whelan delivers Adrienne Brodeur's heartbreaking and exquisitely written memoir with an observer's objectivity yet with enough compassion to keep listeners enthralled. The author paints her mother, Malabar, with loving strokes, revealing a child-woman who involves 14-year-old Adrienne in the intense love affair she carries on with her husband's best friend. By making her daughter complicit in her deception, Adrienne's mother makes her feel special and needed. Whelan creates the perfect picture of a child so consumed by her mother that she hardly knows where her mother ends and she begins. This audiobook offers an incisive psychological study of an unhealthy mother-daughter relationship, and Whelan makes Adrienne's struggle to find and separate herself from Malabar absolutely convincing. A conversation with the author and the narrator follows this poignant work.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019
Duration: 8 hrs, 15 mins
Publisher: Audible, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
James Michener tells the real stories behind the man and his books. The recording is read with skill and consistency although the reader does little to enhance the robust, larger-than-life incidents related in the book. Due to the first-person narrative format, there is no opportunity for the narrator to change his voice. This makes some chapters monotonous as they go on and on in the typical Michener style. The listener may also become confused because the stories are not told chronologically. This is not a great choice for the audio format, but Michener fans may stick with it to the end.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 22 hrs
Publisher: Books on Tape
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
In a quest for a sense of inner contentment and self-worth, Gloria Steinem brings the reader on a journey of investigation and discovery. Steinem reads the text herself in a straightforward and friendly, but not intimate, presentation which is so easy to listen to it invites repetition--thus ensuring the painless relearning of the lessons of the book. It's difficult to tell from the reading that this audiobook is abridged; each section can stand alone. Nonetheless, the listener wished the book were unabridged. Steinem left me wanting to learn more.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 3 hrs
Publisher: Dove Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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