Allyson Ryan gives a wry, intelligent narration of Beattie's latest collection. The setting of the six linked stories is Charlottesville, Virginia, as the city wrestles with the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the aftermath of the 2017 Unite the Right rally. These stories are clear and accessible, but listeners may benefit from a second listen to appreciate their complexity and interconnections. The characters include an actor's girlfriend who is sheltering in place with her boyfriend's father while the actor remains in Japan and a substitute professor at the University of Virginia, where there are campus protests over Confederate monuments. Ryan creates varied and distinct portrayals of the large cast and impressively depicts the ambiance of each setting. Insightful writing and skilled narration create a satisfying listen.
Pub Date: July 18, 2023
Duration: 8 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781797155579
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 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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