In this novel, author Francisco Goldman recounts the experiences of his protagonist, named Francisco Goldberg, as he straddles various identities--Catholic and Jewish, white and Latino, native and expat--while navigating the pleasures and pitfalls of love and international travel. Robert Fass provides a thoughtful narration, portraying Goldberg as an intellectually minded man who is baring his soul in a deeply self-revelatory work. Fass is introspective, confessional, and reflective in recounting Goldberg's life. His pacing is measured, and his vocal tone varied, conveying a contemplative approach. Fass employs slight accents to signal the native Spanish speakers in the work, such as Goldberg's soft-spoken Guatemalan mother. Spanning multiple decades and continents, this title is an epic exploration of a man and his family.
Pub Date: May 4, 2021
Duration: 12 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9781666105964
Publisher: Tantor Media
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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