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Love makes the cassettes go round
REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD If love makes the world go round, then love stories make the cassettes spin, and we lucky listeners always win.
Ava Johnson lived the high life in Atlanta for ten years, but that's over; Ava is HIV positive and on her way to San Francisco to live a different life, away from the judgmental eyes of her fancy, powerful friends. She stops to see her sister, who still lives in their out-of-the-way, all-black hometown in Michigan. There begins Pearl Cleage's charming, offbeat novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, which turns a story of impending tragedy into something that "looks like love if you catch it in the moonlight" -- that looks like and sounds like a wonderful, feisty, frank (if x-rated) love story. Be sure to catch this very appealing audio, read by its very appealing author, on any ordinary day.
By Pearl Cleage Simon & Schuster Audio, $23 4.5 hours ISBN 0671044702
If you liked -- or loved -- Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, you'll be taken and shaken back into their world with Little Altars Everywhere. If you haven't had the pleasure yet, you're in for a treat. Rebecca Wells wrote this one first, but they are of a piece, a piece of powerful, poignant fiction that saddens and gladdens, that takes you into the beating heart of family life and strife at Pecan Grove in Thornton, Louisiana. The stories are told in alternating voices, moving easily between past and present. The voices, all masterfully recreated in Ms. Wells's fabulous reading, are familiar, yet always original: Vivi, the most flamboyant of the Ya-Yas; Sidda, living through the agonies and joys of growing up as Vivi's daughter; Sidda's siblings; Mr. "Big" Shep, their perplexed father; Chaney and Willetta, who have served and watched over the family. Their facades slip, their fears show, but so does their love.
By Rebecca Wells HarperAudio, $18 3 hours ISBN 0694521531 Love of a best friend The Jane in The Evolution of Jane, Cathleen Schine's brilliant new novel, is Jane Barlow Schwartz, aged 25 and recently released from a marriage that hardly happened. Now on a trip to the Galapagos, the first person Jane sees on landing is her former best friend and distant cousin Martha, who is to be their nature tutor and guide. Jane, obsessed for years by the loss of Martha's friendship, is thrown into a swirl of memories -- of her marvelous Cuban/ Connecticut Yankee mother, her Brooklyn/Jewish father, a Barlow family feud, and all the pettiness and passion that mark young girls' friendships. All the while, the tripsters are thrown into an equally powerful swirl of nature, Darwinian theory, blue-footed boobies and red-lipped batfish, driving Jane to obsess about the meaning of species almost as much as she obsesses about Martha. Happily, this is an unabridged audio, so every bit of Ms. Schine's ingenious melding of the elements of evolutionary theory with her astute observation of the human comedy is here to enjoy.
By Cathleen Schine Brilliance, $24.95 8 hours ISBN 1567400876 A mother's love This is a true tear-jerker, so even if you think you're immune, keep those hankies close at hand. In the labyrinthian ways of Hollywood, Stepmom, the book by Maggie Robb, is based on a story by Gigi Levangie and a screenplay by Ms. Levangie and many others. Here, Stepmom, the audio version, is read by Blair Brown, who skillfully performs all three parts: Jackie, the super-mom, totally devoted to her son and daughter; Luke, her former husband, driven away by Jackie's all-consuming involvement with the children; and Isabelle, young, glamorous, madly in love with Luke. The kids are there, too, bewildered by the divorce, unsettled by this young woman who has taken a place in their father's heart. What finally brings them all together, what makes them all reach into the recesses of their hearts, will reach into yours and tug hard at its strings.
By Maggie Robb Time Warner AudioBooks, $17.98 3 hours ISBN 1570426864 Something special for the kids Lily's Crossing, performed by Mia Dillon, is a Newbery Honor Book for children ages 8-12, but it's the kind of audio that even parents will enjoy. It's set in the summer of 1944, at Rockaway Beach, where Lily watches troop ships begin their trek across the Atlantic -- one, perhaps, carrying her beloved father -- and where she meets a boy her own age, a refugee from Hungary, whose parents were killed by the Nazis and whose sister is somewhere in France. They become constant companions, sharing their fears about loss and separation, the war and the future, discovering that love and friendship make a world of difference in a very troubling world. Author Patricia Reilly Giff tells this story with simplicity, honesty, and a refreshingly clear understanding of childhood.
By Patricia Reilly Giff BDD Audio, $19.95 3.5 hours, unabridged ISBN 0553525298 Sukey Howard reports on spoken word audio each month.
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