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September sounds good
REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD
By Stephen King Simon & Schuster Audio, $15 ISBN 0743520041
An affair to remember
Philip Randall, the rising star of Howard Roughan's The Up and Comer is well on his way to the top. He's a successful young lawyer, married to a woman with skads of Daddy's money to spend, and he's living the glitzy, "bright lights, big city" New York life. He's also a risk taker who is sleeping with his best friend's wife. So, when a former schoolmate with a sociopathic vendetta shows up with some photos and asks for big time blackmail, it's not too surprising that Philip considers the risks and tells us "it's not everyday that you think about killing someone." The plot twists from here on out are slick and searing, and though Philip is hardly the model of model behavior, it's hard not to pull for him -- a feeling fostered by reader Frank Whale, who seems to have gotten right into Philip's stressed out psyche.
By Howard Roughan Time Warner Audiobooks, $24.98 ISBN 1586210521
Captors and captives
Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese electronics mega-mogul and passionate lover of opera, came to the vice-presidential mansion on the edge of the jungle in a South American capital (a thinly disguised Lima) to hear Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, sing. The other important guests came to flatter Mr. Hosokawa. As Roxanne is preparing for an encore, the mansion is suddenly taken over by a group of revolutionaries hoping to kidnap the country's president. So begins Bel Canto, Ann Patchett's wholly captivating novel that chronicles the months that the hostages, 39 men and one world-famous diva, and hostage-takers, a rag-tag group of rebels-on-the-mild-side, spend together. Intense relationships are almost unavoidable in this tight space, and the relationships Patchett explores are funny, lyric, sad and totally compelling. Anna Fields' performance is faultless and one only misses hearing Roxanne actually sing.
By Ann Patchett HarperAudio, $39.95 ISBN 0694525332
Past forgetting
Elizabeth George goes well beyond the genre of crime fiction with her latest, A Traitor to Memory. Though there are victims, murderers and detectives, like the very appealing, aristocratic Detective Inspector Thomas Linley and his longtime partners Havers and Nkata, it's the carefully wrought story line and the fully fleshed-out characters that make George a "master of the British mystery." A woman is deliberately run over in a quiet part of London, and a young violin virtuoso suddenly loses his ability to play. These two occurrences at first seem to have no relevance to each other, but as Linley and Co. investigate, the pieces of an intricate and tragic family history slowly fall into place and the truth gradually comes to light. Simon Jones, always an eloquent reader, gives a nicely nuanced performance.
By Elizabeth George Bantam Books-Audio, $25.95 ISBN 0553528211
Animal attraction
I've been reading and listening to Philip Roth for more than 30 years and have always found him brilliant, challenging, disturbing, funny and, sometimes, offensive. His new novel, The Dying Animal, read by Arliss Howard with impeccable timing in a voice that seems to belong, unequivocally, to its hero-anti-hero-narrator David Kepesh, is all of those things. Kepesh, who has appeared three times before in the Roth opus, recounts his obsessive infatuation with a voluptuous former student, 38 years his junior. Kepesh doesn't fall in love (in fact the word "love" is never uttered), but he does have an intense sexual affair. So intense that it comes very close to deep-sixing his determinedly libertine lifestyle and undoing the sensibilities of a man without much sympathy or curiosity about others, especially women. A fascinating book whether or not you like Kepesh or agree with his musings on sex and freedom.
By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin Audio, $25 ISBN 061813588X
Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month. |
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Luckily for audio aficionados, Stephen King gives us special treatment. His latest audio-only is LT's Theory of Pets. Recorded live in the Royal Festival Hall in London, Mr. King reads this himself -- an added extra. To entertain his buddies at work, LT often tells a story. It always starts with the note he found on his refrigerator the day his wife left him. Seems things were going OK in a marital way until his wife gave him a Jack Russell terrier and he gave her a Siamese cat. His audience (which now includes us) is lulled into thinking that this is a gruff guy lament of woman induced woe that could well be the model for a country music song. But that would signal a kinder, gentler Stephen King, and, no surprise, that's not what he has become. Lurking here are all the evil forces we have come to love, all the discomfiting shadows of sinister somethings beyond human understanding that need more than the Surgeon General's caveat to keep unsuspecting innocents out of harm's way. Like all King-conjured tales, this is best listened to in bright daylight, and I'd do it without the beloved family cat sitting in your lap.