A luminous ensemble brings this delectable audiobook to life. Listeners follow three generations of the Izquierdo family. In 1958, Papa Tavo and Guadalupe moved from Reynosa to McAllen. The Izquierdos are sure a neighbor has placed a curse on them. They attribute all their sadness or bad luck to the curse. But not all the Izquierdos believe in this curse; listeners get a chance to hear different perspectives from various family members. This audiobook also explores themes of family, religion, gender roles, and respect for elders through a traditional and modern lens. The narrators are consummate professionals who easily switch from English to Spanish, use various accents flawlessly, and create distinct and unique voices for each family member. Overall, the cast creates a rich and rewarding listening experience.
Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
Duration: 8 hrs
DD ISBN: 9798212189330
Publisher: Blackstone 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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