Austin Ku's understated narration evokes the melancholy atmosphere of this haunting coming-of-age story set in the world of competitive table tennis. The novel opens with a tragedy: Ryan Lo, a table tennis prodigy, is dead at age 24. At his funeral his parents wait for his usually punctual longtime coach, Kristian, to arrive. The narrative then moves back in time, unfolding through multiple perspectives as each character reveals fragments of Ryan's turbulent journey. From heartbreak and injury to triumph and defeat, Zhao crafts an incisive portrait of ambition in competitive athletics. Ku keeps emotions to a minimum while still underscoring the heavy mood of the story. A richly detailed bildungsroman that has plenty of appeal for those who love sports and even those who don't.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2025
Duration: 9 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781511377706
Publisher: Brilliance 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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