Caitlin Kinnunen demonstrates superb range in her narration of this sweet, funny coming-of-age story set in 1970s Baltimore. At 14, Mary Jane is rooted in her conservative family’s routine, so she’s shocked when she nannies Izzy, the daughter of a psychiatrist who has a rock star and his wife, an actress, staying with them. Mary Jane’s worldview expands as she witnesses liberal lifestyles and overhears conversations about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. From the gravelly voiced musician to the high-pitched Izzy, Kinnunen gives each character a distinct voice, making listeners feel as though they are part of the loving, chaotic home. Kinnunen takes advantage of musical sound effects with a strong delivery of singing and a periodic refrain of “cha, cha, pop” spoken with pep. A.L.C. 2022 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Pub Date: May 11, 2021
Duration: 9 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9780063052321
Publisher: Harper 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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