Narrator Julia Whelan provides a conversational delivery for this multilayered summer story set on the North Fork of Long Island. Ruthie and her daughter, Jemma, start the tourist season as they always do, by welcoming summer renters into their beachside home. Little do they realize that by Labor Day nothing will ever be the same. Whelan's impressive ability to impart the characters' personalities into their dialogue comes to the fore in this story of new beginnings. She gives Jemma a recognizable teenage attitude, and an older art collector a rich man's confidence. This audiobook, with its fully realized characters facing real-life situations and a range of family and relationship issues, will bring depth to your reading list.
Pub Date: 2018
Duration: 10 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9780525524250
Publisher: Random House 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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