Claire Keegan narrates her story about a Friday in the life of a Dublin office worker. Her deep voice, a trifle raspy, conveys its darkness of mood. An Irishman named Cathal ventures home to his flat, where no one welcomes him, not even his cat. This story depicts the endemic misogyny that can thwart relationships. Ingrained in Cathal is a stinginess of spirit. He was once engaged to a lively French girl, charmingly portrayed by Keegan, but he failed to unbend and celebrate the simple joys of companionship. Though this story unfolds in less than an hour, it creates a fully developed portrayal of a man lacking in generosity, empathy, or humor. Keegan is both a skilled narrator and the creator of a small literary gem.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2023
Duration: 50 mins
Publisher: Faber & Faber
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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