A supremely talented cast narrates 12 short works that could only have originated from master storyteller/director Pedro Almodóvar. This first collection ranges from personal essays--there's one about the death of his mother--to a fascinating retelling of "Sleeping Beauty" that revolves around the Spanish Queen Juana la Loca. Fans of Almodóvar's work will recognize the story "The Visit" from his film BAD EDUCATION. Collectively, the narrators rise to the challenge of conveying the emotions and the unique aspects of these curious tales. The narrators, professional actors, aptly convey Almodóvar's passion for storytelling with their vocal talents. The author's introduction offers more insight. Fans of Almodóvar's work should not miss this remarkable collection.
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
Duration: 6 hrs
DD ISBN: 9780063349773
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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