Narrator Jade Wheeler warmly draws listeners into this thought-provoking literary debut. The U.S. has elected its first female president, who signs the Forgiveness Act. To provide reparations for slavery, $175,000 is awarded to individuals who can prove they are descendants of enslaved people. The story explores varying viewpoints on the program and its possible implications. Wheeler's clear, authoritative performance engages listeners as they follow the Black Revel family through multiple generations, one of which includes single mom Willie. Wheeler's compelling narration delves into the complexities of family dynamics, racism, and the challenges of providing "proof" for reparations. While the ending is a bit rushed, this ambitious, layered story offers a stimulating and lingering listening experience.
Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
Duration: 8 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9780593787168
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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