Sukey's Favorite

Moral Disorder
By Margaret Atwood
Random House Audio, $34.95
7.5 hours unabridged, CD
ISBN 0739340514

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Moral Disorder, a collection of interconnected stories, is Margaret Atwood at her best. Using the short story form allows her to paint with quick, brilliant brush strokes, to let an incident show you the shape of a life, to move forward and back in time. She does this so skillfully that the sum of these stories, all told in the first person, adds up to an intensely intimate portrait of a woman's life, tangled with the lives of her parents, her younger, needy sister, the "older" man who becomes her husband, his demanding first wife and their children. Atwood's crystal-clear, spare prose seems made to be read aloud, and Susan Denaker's pitch-perfect voice seems made to read it.

Once a spy, always a spy

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

During the summer of 1976, Ruth, a single mother living and teaching in Oxford, discovers that her very English mother, Sally, is really a Russian émigré who had been a spy for the British during WWII. Restless, William Boyd's latest, explores these revelations and their impact with unerring skill. A gripping tale of espionage, love and betrayal, it's also the story of a mother and daughter coming to terms with each other, the past and the "bitter dark current of fear" Sally always carried with her. Not a genre thriller, though as thrilling as any, this finely wrought novel is beautifully performed by Rosemund Pike.


Castles in the air

Keep your wits about you as you enter The Keep, Jennifer Egan's latest novel, or you might get lost in the intriguing, intricately convoluted maze of stories. Danny, an edgy, somewhat paranoid Manhattanite, obsessive about constant connectivity, goes to work for Howie, his estranged cousin, who's intent on transforming a crumbling Gothic castle in remote Eastern Europe into a luxury hotel where imagination will replace communication technology. But then Danny and Howie may be characters in a tale spun by a prison inmate in a creative writing course. A chilling tour de force made eerily real by readers Jeff Gurner and Geneva Carr.


A voracious vine

The Ruins, Scott Smith's super-scary thriller, set in the Mayan jungle not far from Cancun, could be seen as a cautionary tale from which you will learn that a lazy, hazy, alcohol-infused beach vacation—a post-graduation treat before "real" life begins—should never be abandoned for a little adventure in the wild. More terrifying than any horror flick I've seen (and that includes the mummy movies of my childhood), this encounter with insidious, creeping evil mesmerizes as you watch this small group trying valiantly to outsmart a mysterious force. Patrick Wilson's compelling narration will keep you on edge until the last grisly moment.


Buried secrets

When Dr. David Henry saw that his daughter, unexpected and born minutes after her twin brother, had Down's syndrome, he made a split-second decision to send her away without his wife's knowledge. It was 1964, the prognosis was early death for the child, pain for the family. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby to an institution. But, instead, she leaves town with the infant and creates a meaningful life for them both. So begins Kim Edwards' heart-wrenching novel, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, now a paperback bestseller and book club favorite. Reader Martha Plimpton gives each character a distinct presence as we follow the two families that emerge from David's fateful choice.


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