A Sense of the World

James Holman, a lieutenant in the 1812 British navy, loses his sight at age 25 and teaches himself independence from his acquired disability. Using artful expression and Dickensian prose, Jason Roberts manages to make Holman's worldly travels sound like a Victorian novel, including elaborate descriptions of all the minor personae in the blind man's milieu. Narrator John Curless speaks the upper-class English of the sightless officer with duty to each word. Using the measured elocution of a language teacher, but without any unwelcome exaggeration, his resonating voice quickens the author's characters into people we can experience as though we had known them. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine