Narrator Nyasha Hatendi's deliberate pacing and expressive voice capture the mournful, chilly atmosphere of this unusual historical mystery told in reverse by a local priest named John Reve. It is 1491, in Oakham, England, and wealthy Thomas Newman has drowned just before Lent. Was it murder, suicide, or an accident? John Reve hears everyone's confessions--their secrets, lies, and bad habits both mundane and significant. The days run backward, and the truth seems to be revealed. But the magic of this audiobook isn't in the mystery or the resolution. It's in the brilliant match of the author's and narrator's creation of an environment--a cold, God-fearing, exhausting time of deprivation and tragedy. A master of timing, Hatendi captures the drama of suspenseful pauses, fretful silences, and guilty consciences.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2018
Duration: 11 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781980017080
Publisher: Recorded Books Inc.
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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