AUDIO BOOK REVIEWS
by Jonathan Lowe
What can you
say about one of the biggest (and first) big business scandals
of the new Century? Deregulation from Clinton to George Bush,
and now to Obama has led America to the brink of financial
ruin. It was a license to steal, and the big banks did so
by paying off politicians and ratings agencies and even professors
of economics at Harvard. Then they had the audacity to snub
their own employees as they climbed into their luxury yachts
and jets. ENRON
by Lucy Prebble was a stage play, and is now an audiobook
from L.A. Theatre Works, with Rosalyn Ayres (usually a narrator)
directing a full cast. Call it an immorality tale showing
how greed can blind people to everything but the bottom line--like
a poker game gone wrong--and from which no one emerges unscathed.
With acting skills too good to fail, the performers
here are Steven Weber, Gregory Itzin and Amy Pietz with Chris
Butler, Jackie Emerson, Greg Germann, Pamela J. Gray, Kasey
Mahaffy, Jon Matthews, Julia McIlvaine, Russell Soder, Kenneth
Alan Williams and Matthew Wolf. |
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UNDER
THE SKIN is an offbeat horror story by
Michel Faber about an alien temptress who picks
up muscular hitchhikers in order to have them processed
as food by her superiors. The writing is superb, slowing
revealing more about the character and her emotions about
her situation. Two things are fascinating here, the one
building to the other. First, we are forced to see a view
of humanity from an intelligence outside our own, with a
cold calculation imposed on it from a source without sympathy
or empathy. (She has more empathy with a dog, and this fact
leads us to consider the mystery of why societies dehumanize
people outside their group or clan.) Then, nearer the end,
we are forced to toy with empathy for this alien, since
she is an outcast, being used by a system within her own
species. It will be interesting to see how the movie version
turns out, with Scarlett Johansson in the lead. As for the
audiobook, narrator Gerri Halligan could
hardly have been better chosen. She has all the Scottish
and English accents down perfectly, and lends the production
with a precise and affecting experience that leads to a
subtle yet gripping pathos. |
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If "absurd" and "zany" are adjectives
you want to describe a comic novel, LUNATICS
by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel may be just the
ticket. They also read the novel on audio, along with Mark
Thompson, Sean Kenin, and Orlagh Cassidy. The plot
concerns a pet shop owner and "forensic plumber"
whose crossed paths and silly misadventures led to them
becoming international criminals being sought by police.
Into the soup are thrown a kidnapped lemur, arguments over
politics and fashion, Donald Trump's hair, and just about
every etiquette malfunction and bathroom joke you can imagine.
The story is lobbed back and forth between the two like
a tennis ball you can't take your eyes from, utilizing short
chapters alternately delivered. Everyone knows Barry as
a longtime newspaper humor columnist, while Zweibel is an
Emmy winning TV comedy writer (SNL to Curb Your Enthusiasm.)
They play opposites here, for effect, but are essentially
equal in their wish to tickle the same targeted funny bone.
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When a school shooting happens, the public shakes their
heads and inevitably asks the question, "What kind
of parents let this happen?" Certainly parents have
a decisive role in how children turn out, but in some cases
the child may have been born with latent tendencies toward
anti-social behavior. In WE
NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN author Lionel Shriver
explores the character of a woman named Eva, whose child
murdered nine people just before his 16th birthday. Eva
never bonded with Kevin, and now, two years after the murders,
writes letters to her estranged husband trying to understand
what happened, and how much of the blame she holds. Coleen
Marlo narrates the novel, which was made into a
movie in England starring Tilda Swinton. Thought provoking
and deeply engaging, the story is well told by Marlo, whose
precise and listenable voice is augmented by a sensitivity
to tone, making the letters come alive. The writing is intelligent
and well crafted, evoking consideration of how one parent
can be blinded by optimism while the other is left to forge
an understanding of cause and effect, leading to forgiveness.
The reader is left to think, if not to talk, about Kevin
long afterward, given the honesty of the narrative and the
twists of plot. The 2003 novel has just been released on
audio, since the movie is getting a wider release in America. |
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