Narrators Jane Alexander, Alex McKenna, and John Rubenstein have a synergy that adds momentum to this touching novel. In a velvety voice, McKenna portrays Lilia Imbody, who reflects on her life as she reads the posthumously published memoir of Roland Bouley, her former lover and the father of her daughter. As Lilia reads, she annotates the work with her own opinions. Delivering her commentary, Alexander captures the humor, sadness, and strength of the octogenarian. Alexander's delivery of Lilia's poignant observations and heartrending contemplations on her daughter Lucy's life and death is especially powerful. Rubenstein brings joviality and charm to his portrayal of the fanciful young Bouley; his portrayal makes the character quite endearing. The seamless transitions between the narrators make the unfolding story an affecting listening experience.
Pub Date: July 28, 2020
Duration: 12 hrs
DD ISBN: 9780593286517
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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