Between them, narrators Bahni Turpin and Dominic Hoffman create a panoply of striking characters in Regina Porter's cornucopia of a novel. Spanning America's complex history between the 1950s and President Obama's first year in office, the story introduces two families--one black, one white--whose lives intersect repeatedly over the years. The loosely knit plot and frequently shifting time periods can be difficult to follow in audio. However, Porter's background as a playwright means that the book's multitudinous short scenes are tight, visual, and engaging. After a while, I gave up trying to track every turn of this abundant audiobook and abandoned myself to the delight of listening to Turpin and Hoffman craft memorable mini-plays filled with one unique personality after another.
Pub Date: 2019
Duration: 12 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781984884251
Publisher: Random House 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
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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