Narrator Nan McNamara is the ideal choice to present this first-person novel about a family retreat on Cape Cod. The rustic compound affectionately called "The Paper Palace" has shaped the life of Elle Bishop. This story moves across time, involving loves, lies, secrets, and revelations. McNamara gives Elle a natural-sounding American voice that changes with her age or emotional footing. Her hideous stepbrother, Conrad, is memorably portrayed. Listeners can hear the menace in his voice as clearly as his Louisiana drawl. Equally evocative is the voice of Wallace, Elle's mother. Her acid tone is Waspy, witty, and wonderfully rendered. The pace of this lyrical novel is leisurely but worth one's time.
Pub Date: 2021
Duration: 12 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9780593412503
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: N/A
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: N/A
Duration: 5 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781681680057
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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