Listeners follow Nicky Hennigan, a young waitress in the small town of Ballina, Ireland, who discovers that her boyfriend, Doll English, has disappeared. Over a single weekend, Nicky comes to find out that Doll has been kidnapped by the Ferdia Brothers. Damian Gildea captures the wit of this story in every line and voice. Gildea reflects the pale existence of the Irish countryside in his portrayal of the characters and their search for light, both literally and figuratively. His rich, punchy voice brings out all the twists and turns of this single weekend in Ireland and all the fiascos that ensue. Listeners can expect moments that are laugh-out-loud funny, staggeringly thrilling, and all around a joy to listen to.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2024
Duration: 6 hrs, 45 mins
Publisher: Audible, Inc.
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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