In a remarkable combination, Juliet Stevenson enlivens Sarah Waters's rich, intimate character study set in 1920s London. In the genteel neighborhood of Champion Hill, Frances Wray and her mother are forced to take in “paying guests”—Leonard and Lilian Barber—to maintain their household after the war. Using a variety of British accents, Stevenson makes class and regional distinctions clear, bringing depth to the many characters and what divides them. As the romantic relationship between Frances and Lilian evolves, Stevenson conveys their sense of urgency and isolation with expert pacing. Flawless are the passages of confrontation between characters, as Stevenson never hesitates to modulate her tone, adjust her pace, or employ a deliberate pause to bring the listener in closer. An authentic, stirring performance.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
Duration: 21 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9780698179929
Publisher: Penguin 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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