A dozen narrators perform this collection of stories about Chinese 20-somethings who are navigating the road to adulthood. All the narrators underscore the central drama of the stories, such as the clash of generations, the difficulties and joys of immigration, and the complexities of friendship. The characters are primarily the children of immigrants, university students abroad, or young adults, rich or poor, who are trying to find a future in today's China. Standout performances are Annie Q's smooth, soft portrayal of a woman who unwittingly finds social media fame in Paris, David Shih's interpretation of the emotional torment of a young, gay athlete who is in love with his heterosexual diving partner, and James Chen's characterizations of a factory manager who negotiates a marriage of convenience to gain a new country and wealth.
Pub Date: May 14, 2019
Duration: 6 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781984884237
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
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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