Rebecca Lowman's glorious narration places listeners in the midst of the joys and trials of motherhood in this splendid audiobook, set during the course of one day. Maisie is the mother of four young children, including a newborn daughter. She and her husband, Neil, have financial woes. Much of the story focuses on Maisie's present-day musings on motherhood and her recollections of the early loss of her mother. Lowman expertly illuminates Maisie's sharp insights. Maisie's interactions with other mothers highlight their shared concerns over vaccines and work/home balance. Lowman infuses each woman with emotion and nuance, and her character portrayals of Maisie's children are well realized. Those who seek fast-paced narratives may find this story meandering, but there is much to ponder here.
Pub Date: April 25, 2023
Duration: 7 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9780593792032
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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