Edoardo Ballerini narrates this gentle and evocative thriller with style. Against the backdrop of post-WWII Italy, an unnamed young man idles away time, putting off his return to work and a more normal life. As he travels around a lake, he meets Orimbelli, with whom he forms a fragile friendship, and they set out on adventures that end in a mysterious tragedy. Ballerini's beautiful Italian accent, applied to place names and people, adds to the depth of the story. His spot-on pacing and characterizations make this a pleasurable listen and give one the confidence that none of the subtleties of the story have been lost in translation from the original Italian.
Pub Date: 2019
Duration: 3 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781974984916
Publisher: Dreamscape
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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