Truth and Consequences

Jamie Heinlen's narration of this novel is a fine example of audiobooks at their best. She masterfully captures both the characters' personalities and their shifting emotions. The conversations of chronic pain sufferer, Alan, and his wife, Jane, are whiny and tense. But their tone changes markedly when a new pair comes to the university where they're employed. Alan brightens as he succumbs to the spell of visiting writer and Southern siren Delia. Jane's encounters with Delia's husband, Henry, ease the strain in her voice, while shaking her view of the world. Henry, in turn, moves from demanding to docile. Only Delia remains the same, unmoved by the upheaval she precipitates. Bravo to Heinlen's outstanding narration! J.J.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

August 8, 2005
Lurie's various academic romances, set against the backdrop of a thinly veiled Cornell University, point in a straight line to tragicomic double-think relationship writers like Lorrie Moore. This latest foray begins promisingly: Jane MacKenzie fails to recognize her own husband, Alan, as he approaches their house from a distance, so bent and changed is he by his aching back. He's an architecture professor (expert on Victoriana); she's a university administrator. When visiting poet Delia Delaney takes up residence, it's Jane who has to attend to her diva-like demands, while simultaneously trying to cope with an incapacitated Alan. Once he's up and around, though, sexy and selfish Delia toys with, then seduces him. The affair gives Alan a midlife lift, and, on discovery, gives Jane a reason to leave him, perhaps for Henry, Delia's ombudsman husband and Jane's highly organized mirror-image. The problem is that Lurie, whose Pulitzer Prize–winning Foreign Affairs
is everything this isn't, doesn't seem much interested in fleshing out her characters' romps. Remedial repetitions of basic facts, character descriptions and plot points throughout give the proceedings a strangely clinical feel, as if her characters' reactions were too base to engage with fully: they are reported almost dutifully, though not without offhand flashes of crackly brilliance. 5-city author tour
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