Devils

Faced with a large cast of characters, narrators have two choices: invent a lot of distinctive voices or capture each character's mood and depend on the author to clarify who is speaking. In this production, two masters--Dostoevsky and Guidall--combine to keep us riveted without the distraction of excessive impersonation. Yes, there's a lot of discussion of philosophy (this is a Russian novel, after all), but George Guidall's narration helps us to understand how passionately vital that is to most of the major characters. Politics and philosophy are literally issues of life and death to Nikolai Stavrogin and Alexei Kirilov and Stepan Verkhovensky and the people who get entangled in their lives and secrets. Guidall makes it thrilling. D.M.H. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine