Dominic Hoffman vividly narrates the story of an old, drunken church deacon named Sportcoat who shoots a young drug dealer in the middle of a Brooklyn courtyard. Hoffman brings a multi-textured richness to each character in the novel. They are familiar and familial in their interactions. Hoffman is Irish, Italian, Hispanic, African-American, young, old, female, and male—people who all live in one concentrated area during the late 1960s. His ever-changing accents express both saint and sinner, humorous and sentimental, hateful and loving. Hoffman knows when to quicken the tempo or become biting, the way friends or enemies are at the height of frustration. The listener is humorously entertained and drawn into the neighborhood as a community member witnessing the unfolding of this unpredictable story. T.E.C. 2020 Best Audiobook, 2021 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Pub Date: 2020
Duration: 14 hrs
DD ISBN: 9780593166987
Publisher: Penguin 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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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