Lisa Renee Pitts narrates the majority of this ambitious novel split between the 1930s and 22nd-century Los Angeles. The story also includes occasional flashbacks, one of which is narrated by Kevin R. Free. Lou is a young Black woman in 1930s Los Angeles who does not know anything of her past before the moment she suddenly appeared in an alley. Pitts does an excellent job voicing Lou on her journey from lost girl to confident woman. As Lou slowly learns about herself, Pitts's portrayal becomes more self-assured. Her depiction of Lou's best friend, Esther, is also of note; Esther is bold and pragmatic while Lou is often quiet and timid. Free narrates two brief sections with his usual skill and talent but is ultimately underutilized.
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
Duration: 11 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781705044810
Publisher: Recorded Books Inc.
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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