Natalie Naudus narrates a reimagining of THE GREAT GATSBY that is magical and queer, while still wholly true to the spirit of the original. Jordan Baker may be an adopted orphan of the War in Vietnam, but she does not dwell on her past; she has status and money and connections, and she uses them to advance herself. Naudus perfectly captures Jordan's ambivalent feelings about her decidedly murky origins without deviating from the carefully crafted façade of carefree flapper that Jordan presents to the world. As the familiar plot advances, Naudus ratchets up the tension and dread as the slow, creeping horror of precisely what Gatsby and Daisy have done--and will always continue to do--finally dawns on Jordan, leaving her feeling bereft and betrayed. A beautiful retelling.
Pub Date: June 1, 2021
Duration: 9 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781250825230
Publisher: Macmillan 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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