Julia Whelan's comedic timing is on display in this deceptively charming novel. Kate is a soon-to-be-divorced, 30-something failed screenwriter with an addiction to lying who has reluctantly returned home for her father's funeral. Admittedly, Kate is not immediately likable--she's often saying, thinking, or doing the wrong things--but she's fully recognizable. Whelan embraces Kate's sardonic tone while allowing room for her growing self-awareness. Typical of family reunion stories, truths are revealed, and tensions abound between a wide cast of characters. Whelan succeeds at keeping each of them distinguished and familiar, despite their changing states of emotion or inebriation.
Pub Date: 2014
Duration: 7 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9781478982791
Publisher: Hachette 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:
Duration: N/A
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
As a group of men bring their own emotional baggage to their football-obsessed reunion, R.C. Bray delivers his usual solid narration. He shifts his tones slightly but enough to put the listener in the motel with the men, revealing their foibles as the story progresses. The narrator's role in this book is a descriptive one, and Bray is a good guide. His narration becomes extra important because this is a rare instance when there almost isn't a protagonist. The author's well-written story--which alternates between serious and laugh-out-loud funny--uses quarterback Joe Theismann's 1985 injury, a broken leg, as a McGuffin.
Pub Date:
Duration: 5 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781681680057
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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