Israeli American author Moriel Rothman-Zecher delivers a dazzling narration of his novel of trauma, identity, and sexuality in 1930s Philadelphia. The story centers on three characters: recent arrivals to America Leyb and Gittl, who are the only Jewish survivors of a pogrom in their Ukrainian village, and Charles, a Black intellectual whom Leyb meets in a gay bar. Charles, who has some fluency in Yiddish, helps Gittl, a poet, translate her work into English. With its frequent switches between English and Yiddish words and a nonlinear plot, this is a challenging listen. But it is also rewarding. Every sense is engaged by the novel's precise, inventive language and Rothman-Zecher's impassioned performance such that listeners may see, hear, and smell the sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hopeful world portrayed.
Pub Date: 2022
Duration: 6 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9781696608855
Publisher: HighBridge 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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