Joe Knezevich is the perfect narrator to tell the story of the extreme rivalry between Cal and his brother, Frank. Knezevich creates believable characters in the two siblings, and his characterization of Cal reflects his decline from a highly successful and wealthy prospector traveling the world to a man who is virtually destroyed by his own brother as he becomes trapped in his childhood home in small-town New England. Knezevich's timing is spot-on, allowing the tension to build as yet another betrayal unfolds. His characterizations of other characters are strong, and his authentic use of accents helps to set the scenes in the first part of the book, which recount Cal's travels. Knezevich's polished narration creates a thrilling listen.
Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
Duration: 12 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9780063282575
Publisher: Harper 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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