CategoryAudiobook Reviews

Once again James McBride has brought me a lot of joy and continued to win my admiration for his work. This one is set in Pottstown, Pennsylvania and begins in 1972 when a skeleton was discovered in a well. Before much investigation begins, Hurricane Agnes hits and the skeleton and any other evidence is washed to the sea. The author turns then to Chicken Hill in Pottstown in the 1920s and 1930s...

I listened to Zadie Smith read her fictional work about squabbles and disagreements in the Nineteenth Century literary world among authors William Ainsworth, Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank, and William Makepeace Thackery. The work also turns to the true story of a man who claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne, the heir to a baronetcy. Sir Roger was lost at sea in 1854; his mother posted ads in...

It’s a little hard to imagine, but this is a novel in verse written by a married couple that is part Melville biography and pandemic memoir, with doses of Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, “The Biographer” (of Melville) and others obsessed with him thrown in. Oh yes, and Hawthorne who was a friend of Melville’s. The narrator is working on a biography of Melville as her...

Few books I read are what I think of as “historical novels,” that is, novels whose placement in the past is a key element of the work. The books I’ve read by Paulette Jiles do fall into that category; the three I’ve read do not let you forget they are set in Texas in the period shortly after the Civil War.  I have admired and enjoyed the three, including this one. The main...

I have listened to this one-hour audiobook three times now and have grown to love it more each time. It is a sad story with warm loving characters. I will begin with a SPOILER ALERT; after all, I am writing to revisit what I loved about the book and it’s hard to go far without revelations in this case. It is written from the point of view of a child and begins with her being driven to stay...

It was my enjoyment of Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow that took me to this 2014 book of hers which has been made into a movie. It’s a little tough to imagine that a cranky literary snob who owns a failing bookstore could be made a sympathetic character. Throw in the tragic death of his wife, the theft of a rare book, and an abandoned baby on his doorstep, and things can...

It was a NYT review that took me to this book. Julian tells us—in surprising detail—about his life as a Black man who lives in that very White city, Portland, Oregon. Christian faith was important in his family and he had gone to a Christian college. When we meet him at age 24, he has given up his teaching job, ended his marriage, rejected his Christian belief, and moved to the West Coast. What...

I was not expecting to be so enthralled by a novel about people who create video games, a topic I know nothing about. The characters might have been involved in any undertaking where a combination of talent, luck, and hard work can result in a big reward and great recognition within that field. It was the unique connections among the characters that made it such an appealing story. Sam and Sadie...

Agnès, the adult narrator, begins by recounting that this book is her telling the story of Fabienne, her childhood friend. They were young teens in postwar rural France, in Saint Rémy, where Fabienne dropped out of school at age 11 to herd animals while Agnès continued in school. It is Fabienne who dominates, with her cruel games and her declarations that Agnès is an idiot. Fabienne will pet an...