Galactic Pot-Healer

Joe Fernwright, out-of-work pot-healer on an Earth bogged down by overpopulation and bureaucracy, is summoned by the Glimmung to participate in an epic undertaking. (Imagine a young Douglas Adams writing during a period of existential angst.) Like a Shaw play, this is essentially a dramatic essay in which characters do not speak for themselves but embody viewpoints. They are not much of a challenge for the oral interpreter. What this book does demand of the performer is a carefully controlled tone for the author's narrative voice, in which irony, flippancy and adolescent earnest-ness contend uneasily. Tom Parker accomplishes this admirably, pre-senting a flawed work in the best possible light. J.N. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine