In practically his first audiobook credit, British actor Prasanna Puwanarajah delivers a masterful performance as David Win, the British Burmese protagonist in this latest by one of Britain's most esteemed novelists. Like earlier Hollinghurst protagonists, David is a prism: a gay outsider who is given entry into a world of wealth and privilege. The action is subdued, episodic, advanced mainly by dialogue and subtle interplay. Much--everything--depends upon tone, variations in emphasis and pitch, and the ability of the narrator to maintain continuity. In a virtuoso performance, Puwanarajah conveys David's voice and thoughts as if they were his own. Although he has advanced an impressive career in British theater and television, Puwanarajah is as yet unknown to American audiences. This outstanding audiobook offers the full range of Puwanarajah's rich and compelling voice.
Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
Duration: 16 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9798217018857
Publisher: Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
American colleges are favorable locales for ghastly event and hair-tearing circumstance. There is, for instance, a good deal of pleasure to be had out of professor and past-prodigy Grady Tripp's awful life, as portrayed by Michael Chabon in WONDER BOYS. There is a certain amount of slapstick here, but it's balanced by Chabon's superb portrait of a gale-force mid-life crisis, a soul-destroying albatross of an unfinished novel and the mind-numbing inconsequence of writers' conferences. David Colacci sounds a little starved for oxygen in his reading, but that's not exactly out of keeping with Grady Tripp's personal gestalt.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: N/A
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Class lurks in varying degrees behind every great English comedy, its ineffable code being so endlessly conducive to ironic subtlety. QUEEN LUCIA, the first of the great Lucia novels of E.F. Benson, is imbued with it. Nonetheless, social striving rather than class per se gives the novel its real comic force. At its center is Lucia, the regnant, self-appointed social and cultural leader of a genteel, middle-class circle. She’s a schemer and poser of awesome theatricality and self-delusion. Although the narrative is conducted in the third person, the characters’ doings, most especially Lucia’s, are as often as not reported in the light in which the perpetrators hope to be viewed. Still, the true facts and motivations, usually base, shine luminously through. Geraldine McEwen’s reading truly enhances the work, being a model of cultivated discretion and ironic pacing.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 9 hrs
Publisher: ISIS Audio Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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