With her compassionate narration, Sieh brings depth to Polly's quest.
Kristen Sieh lends a relatable voice to Polly Goodman, a high school English teacher who is struggling with infertility and identity. Polly seems to have it all: supportive friends, a loving husband, and a satisfying career. Still, she can't help but want the one thing she feels she’s destined not to have: a child. Sieh guides listeners through Polly's fertility journey in chronological jumps, sounding at times hopeful, and at other times, defeated. During tough conversations, she gives voice to Polly’s indignation or curiosity. Then, surprise results from a genealogy kit open up new possibilities.
With her compassionate narration, Sieh brings depth to Polly's quest.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
Duration: 8 hrs
DD ISBN: 9798217176410
Publisher: Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 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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