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Let's hear it for Audio Month
REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD June is Audiobook Month, so before you set out on a summer trip, pour over these possibilities and choose a cassette to pass the time. These selections of the best in new audio releases offer something for every taste -- from suspenseful thrillers to uplifting memoirs.
"Who did this to you, Adam, and why?" is Nell's beseeching plea to her husband, killed with four others when his boat was blown up in a New York City harbor. Can he somehow come back to tell her what happened? Can she solve the mystery of the explosion, find peace for Adam's soul, and build a new future for herself? The answers to these questions, and a grippingly good tale, are in Mary Higgins Clark's current bestseller, Before I Say Good-bye. America's undisputed "Queen of Suspense" delves into spiritualism and communication from another plane, as she follows Nell's determined search for the truth, a search that just may put her in deadly jeopardy. As always, Clark draws appealing characters, sets an accurate scene, gets the details right, and adds a hint of romance to keep your interest level high. Broadway actress Jan Maxwell reads both the long and short versions with compelling competence.
By Mary Higgins Clark Simon & Schuster Audio, unabridged, $36 ISBN 0671047892
abridged, $25
After the seemingly endless stream of Marilyn Monroe books, Joyce Carol Oates's extraordinary novel Blonde is something of a revelation. With judicious use of literary license and deeply intuitive understanding, Oates recreates the public, flashbulb-flooded life of "the greatest sex symbol of the twentieth century," and her hellishly insecure, precariously unstable private life. Jayne Atkinson's performance in this audio presentation adds enormous dimension and depth. Without overacting, without clich or caricature, she captures Monroe's breathy, hesitating voice and with it captures both the vixen and the victim, Norma Jean and the mythic Marilyn, the exploitable innocent who survived a nightmarish childhood, the determined, dedicated actress, the self-destructive blond bombshell who grew increasingly angry and distrustful, and who, with her suicide, finally escaped. This is a mesmerizing nine hours of listening, followed by an exclusive interview with the author.
By Joyce Carol Oates HarperAudio, $29.95 ISBN 0694523127
This is Freud's Vienna and the murdered girl at the center of Jody Shields's stylish, startling first novel, The Fig Eater is none other than Freud's famous Dora. But Siggie isn't here himself, and the case is being officially investigated by the well-known Police Inspector and, unbeknownst to him, by his beautiful Hungarian wife, Erszebet. Enlisting the aid of a young English governess, and relying on intuition bolstered by a strong grounding in Gypsy lore, Erszebet pursues a fascinating course that her rigorously trained husband could never take. Shields's dazzling detail gives turn-of-the-century Vienna an extraordinary reality. Patricia Kilgarriff's performance of this 12-hour, unabridged audio is top-notch, her elegant English accent seems absolutely appropriate and her ease with the liberal sprinkling of German and Hungarian phrases, admirable.
By Jody Shields Time Warner AudioBooks, $39.98 ISBN 1570428565
Da Chen was born in 1962 in a small village in rural China, just in time to grow up under the oppressive tyranny of the cultural revolution. His family had been landlords, so along with the grinding poverty they were forced to live in, was the indignity of sanctioned humiliation. Da, the youngest son, somehow transcended the hardships heaped on them and Colors of the Mountain is his affecting, open-hearted coming-of-age memoir, read here by Daxing Zhang. Smart, talented, gutsy, with a loving, supportive family, Da also smoked, drank, gambled with a gang of shady neighborhood louts, and got into even more trouble than his heritage had bestowed on him. For a while, he succumbed to the anti-intellectual atmosphere; then Mao died, and a university education became the highest goal, the ticket out of the rice paddies. Da hit the books, hit the big time, and the rest is history.
By Da Chen Dove Audio, $25 ISBN 0787122602
There are no virulent viruses or emerging epidemics, but Michael Palmer's latest medical mystery thriller, The Patient, will keep you glued to your speakers and headphones. The "patient" here is an extremely nasty fellow, a vicious international mercenary who will blow up a plane or blow away a world leader for the right price. Unfortunately for him, he has a brain tumor that must be removed; unfortunately for a brilliant brain surgeon in Boston, the patient knows that the doctor has developed an extraordinary, minute robotic device that can save his life. The patient, and his intimate and equally nasty entourage, will go to any lengths to insure the success of the procedure; the surgeon must make sure that those lengths do not become a reality. Reader Lisa Harrow is an odd choice, but you'll probably be too engrossed to notice.
By Michael Palmer Bantam Books Audio, $25 ISBN 0553526979
Blake Johnson, former FBI agent and now head of a secret White House department, and Sean Dillon, his wily Irish colleague-in-arms, are at it again in Jack Higgins's newest international bestseller, Day of Reckoning. But this mission has a special meaning for Blake -- his ex-wife, whom he still loved dearly, has been murdered, and he wants revenge. The Mafia, with its own internal intrigue, is involved, as are IRA gun runners, Muslim extremists and some of the sleazier examples London low life. Blake and his buddies, including a host of top-notch Brits and crafty Mossad agents, perform their derring-do with unequivocal elan, facing danger and even death with the bravado of the best. Patrick Macnee, who performs with equal avenging-angel elan, keeps the pace of this unabridged audio turned up. If there is such a thing as a beach bag for guys, put this title in it.
By Jack Higgins Putnam Berkley Audio, $24.95 ISBN 0399146105
But since it is Audiobook Month, there's a little more space to mention a wide range of special titles that have been published this season. Celebrate the 75th anniversary of The New Yorker magazine in grand audio style with two quintessential New Yorker collections. Wonderful Town: New York City Stories from The New Yorker edited by David Remnick includes 20 unabridged short stories by such greats as John Cheever, E.B. White, Susan Sontag, and Woody Allen, among others, and is read by Tyne Daly, Timothy Jerome, Joe Morton, and Maria Tucci. Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker gathers a dozen extraordinary biographies that capture the very essence of a human being into a complex word picture. Here, you'll find Truman Capote on Marlon Brando, A.J. Liebling on Floyd Patterson, Ian Frazier on Heloise, and Hilton Als on Richard Pryor, as well as eight more brilliant journalistic investigations from the 1920s to the present, performed by Philip Bosco, Amy Irving, and Alton Fitzgerald White.
New York City Stories from The New Yorker Edited by David Remnick Random House Audiobooks, $29.95 ISBN 0375409548
Life Stories:
By Thomas Moran Brilliance Audio, unabridged, $27.95 ISBN 1567400922
abridged, $17.95
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Simon & Schuster Audio, $25 ISBN 0671788493
A Spiritual Auto-biography By Sidney Poitier HarperAudio, $32.95 ISBN 0694521965
Shackleton's Incredible Voyage By Alfred Lansing Audio Partners, $24.95 ISBN 1572701331
By Allan Watts New World Library Audio, $11.95 ISBN 1577311183
Leon Wieseltier, well-known literary editor of the New Republic, had been a casual, non-observant Jew. But when his father died, he decided to observe the traditional year-long period of mourning. Kaddish records his spiritual journey, his fascination and study of this ancient ritual, and his reflections on life and death, tradition and modernity, faith and reason, fathers and sons. Accomplished screen and stage actor Theodore Bikel is an ideal narrator.
By Leon Wieseltier Audio Literature, $24.95 ISBN 1574532928
Sukey Howard reports on spoken work audio each month.
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The medium has the message
A candle in the wind
Vienna, 1910
Barefoot boy with brain
Surgical suspense
"It's time to save the free world, again."
So many audios -- so little time
Set in contemporary Ireland still plagued by "The Troubles," Water, Carry Me, Thomas Moran's skillfully told love story, mingles the personal and the political as Una, a young medical student, falls in love with a man whose reality is far from her romantic imaginings.
Season after season, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played superb basketball; then this "living legend," called by Time magazine, "history's greatest basketball player," did an unusual thing. He accepted an invitation from the White Mountain Apache to come to their reservation in northern Arizona and coach the high school team. A Season on the Reservation is the story of Abdul-Jabbar's time with the Alchesay Falcons, a team composed of kids from a very different culture. It wasn't easy for any of them, Abdul-Jabbar included, but they all came away with more than they expected. Read by Carl Lumbly, with an introduction by the author.
We all know Sidney Poitier as an actor, Academy Award winner, director, and screenwriter. But now, listening to this American icon read his candid spiritual memoir, The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Auto-biography, we have the chance to get a closer look at Poitier's real character as he reflects on his career, his life as a husband and father and, most importantly, how well he has lived up to the values he set for himself.
The recent interest in Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton doesn't seem to be waning. We're fortunate now to have Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing, one of the best accounts of his and his crew's astonishing survival against all odds in the ice-bound Antarctic, available on audio cassette, read by Tim Piggott-Smith. Great adventure listening.
Allan Watts, who was so instrumental in bringing Zen and meditation to an American audience, spent the last years of his life in an isolated cabin deep in the woods. Still the Mind is a collection of visionary talks Watts gave in those years. These archival recordings, made and edited by his son Mark, distill his wisdom and instill both the understanding and the experience of meditation.