Emily Woo Zeller delivers a sharp and nimble performance of this offbeat romantic comedy. Joannie has the opportunity to revive a childhood crush on an unpredictable guy or proceed with the dependable guy next door. Golden Voice Zeller balances the tangled web of relationships with clarity, adapting her delivery to reflect the shifting dynamics of a dizzying list of sound-alike characters, including Joannie, Johnny, Jonathan, Julia, and others. Zeller's pacing suits the novel's quick wit and layered dialogue, making space for both humor and tension without overstating either. Her portrayal of Joannie is particularly well calibrated, capturing both her uncertainty and growing self-awareness. Though the plot is complicated by conflicting desires and questionable decisions, Zeller keeps each character distinct. She guides the listener through the chaos with a steady, controlled narration.
Pub Date: March 18, 2025
Duration: 5 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9798217018536
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: 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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