Sukey's Favorite

Jarhead
By Anthony Swofford
Simon & Schuster Audio, 9 hours unabridged
$35, ISBN 0743535383

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And what a voice it is! And what a tale Anthony Swofford tells. Jarhead, his brutal, brutally explicit, brutally funny memoir, is subtitled "A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles," but it's much more. If you ever wondered whether war really is hell, wonder no more, but extend that hell to training for war and waiting for war and define it by loneliness, boredom and fear. In unvarnished language—unless a firestorm of four letter words can be considered varnish—and knock-your-socks off candor, Swofford tells it like was for a testosterone-juiced kid who early on equated manhood with war. For him and his buddies, it was excruciatingly awful and it was exciting, and most exciting of all was surviving. I can't think of a soldier's story that gets this reality across more graphically; a perfect example of fact transcending fiction. The voice you actually hear on this powerful audio presentation is Swofford's own—you wouldn't want anyone else.

Risky business

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

Dr. Mark Seidman was shot, his wife was killed and his six-month-old daughter was taken. Can it get worse? You bet it can, and it does in Harlan Coben's latest diller of a thriller, No Second Chance, read by Scott Brick. The race-paced, pedal-to-the-metal suspense that made Coben's earlier books bestsellers goes from zero to Mach two in this compellingly convoluted tale. Mark is desperate to get his daughter back, to know that she's alive, and the predatory perps who say they have her taunt him with hope. He's been told to keep the cops and the feds out of it, that there will be no second chance to get his beloved baby back. Should he go it alone, should he involve his old love, a former FBI agent, should he listen to his best-friend-from boyhood and lawyer? Mark isn't sure and you won't be either as the plot takes roller-coaster dips and dives. Compulsive listening all the way.


The group

If you're looking for a great beach-listen, The Dirty Girls Social Club, written and read by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, is just what the audio doctor ordered. The sucias (Spanish for dirty girls), as they call themselves, are bright, attractive, 20-somethings who met at Boston University and still get together regularly to eat and drink, laugh and cry, scold, lend a helping hand or a healing shoulder. Two are married and not living happily ever after, and the others are in various stages of yearning, spurning and general romantic unrest. The fact that they are also Latinas, all from different backgrounds, all heading down different career paths, makes their stories and situations all the more fascinating—a glimpse of the American scene many of us haven't seen. A cut above chick-lit, but still fun to chew on.


Midlife crisis

You've heard this scenario: seeing his mortality in the morning mirror, husband of 25 years wants that flush of youth back (oh yes, and the flesh of youth, too) so he takes up with a younger woman, leaving a discarded wife to a diminished life. But every so often, the plan backfires, and it's the old wife who finds the good life. That's the bare bones of Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, Elizabeth Buchan's savvy, satisfying new novel, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman read faultlessly by British actress Jean Gilpin. Rose has managed, not without a great deal of effort, to be a devoted wife and mother and have a successful career—an I Don't Know How She Does It heroine for an older generation. Then, in a flash, the world she cherishes is gone—both husband and job. Revenge is a "dish best eaten cold," and watching Rose get through the cooling off period is a great entertainment.


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