Stig Wemyss's performance of this unique audiobook is brisk and bold. His gorgeous Australian accent takes some getting used to--largely due to his fast pace--but once the listener is immersed in the story, any confusion largely disappears. What makes this production a challenge is the prose itself. Dalton sweeps from poetic meanderings to clear narrative at a moment's notice. The invested listener is the most likely to acclimate to the all-consuming style; this is not an audio performance for a casual or distracted listener, though. Once the story takes off, Eli's coming-of-age account is distinctive and appealing, thanks in large part to Wemyss's skill and enthusiasm as a narrator. His high energy and keen understanding of the characters bring the production to life.
Pub Date: April 2, 2019
Duration: 16 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9780062908735
Publisher: Harper 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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