Four narrators bring Deborah Eisenberg’s highly anticipated story collection to life, and listeners will be delighted with the variety. Eisenberg herself narrates two of the stories, and, while she doesn’t have the vocal gifts of the other three narrators, her voice suits the intimate tone of the works. Julianne Moore narrates a wonderful story, “Cross Off and Move On,” using her acting gifts to get in the head of the main character perfectly. Wallace Shawn’s distinctive voice lends a sardonic note to the dialogue in the final story, “Recalculating.” Actor and experienced narrator Josh Hamilton’s simply modulated reading of two of the stories allows the listener to focus on Eisenberg’s wonderful use of language. A rich listening experience will attract a wide audience.
Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
Duration: 7 hrs
DD ISBN: 9780062864680
Publisher: Harper 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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