Anyone who has been a member of a wedding party will be captivated by Anne Tyler's latest audiobook, appealingly narrated by J. Smith-Cameron. She captures the intonation and Mid-Atlantic accent of 61-year-old Gail, the bride's mother, whose job as an assistant principal is suddenly at risk on the eve of her daughter Debbie's wedding. Gail's ex-husband, Max, shows up unexpectedly on her doorstep, seeking a place to stay with the cat he is fostering. At the same time, Debbie has learned that her fiancé may have cheated on her. Smith-Cameron keeps listeners oriented as the story shifts from the present-day festivities to flashbacks of Max and Gail's married days. Smith-Cameron deftly conveys Tyler's shrewd observations on marriage and family while illuminating the relatable story's poignancy and humor.
Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
Duration: 4 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9798217013593
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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