This novel is so adeptly performed that in losing oneself in the suspenseful plot, one completely forgets that just a single actor puts forth so many characters. Ellen Archer's accents, lovely French pronunciation, vocal range, and perceptive expressions distinctively portray Clare, the story’s chronicler, who is the American wife of a top British diplomat in Paris. Other well-performed principals include Clare’s very English husband; her past lover, who was a member of the IRA; her teenage son; a suspected Turkish terrorist; and a host of singular supporting roles. The novel, which is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s MRS. DALLOWAY, is set on a pivotal day as Clare prepares for a delightful official dinner upon which the future of her husband's diplomatic career depends. At first appearing to be the model of restraint and decorum, Clare is gradually revealed as a woman with a past filled with dangerous allegiances and moral dilemmas. As the novel evokes an exquisite Parisian spring day, Clare's steamy past threatens her family's future, and Archer matches the author's taut wit and luscious imagery moment by moment.
Pub Date: April 17, 2012
Duration: 8 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781611132243
Publisher: Hachette 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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
