Untold Story

May 2, 2011
Ali (Brick Lane) tackles a juicy premise: what if Diana hadn't died. Far from a salacious romp, though, this is a (sometimes too) slow character study of a woman in extraordinary circumstances. Here, Dianaâerr, Lydiaâhas escaped her life as an ex-princess for a new one in the states. All the real details of her previous lifeâcarefully researched and extrapolated fromâare there, with one exception; having survived the car accident, she later fakes her death (by drowning) and finds her way, via Brazil, to America. She ends up, on a darkly humorous whim, in an anonymous everytown called Kensington, where she builds a quiet life with her dog, Rufus, a job at an animal shelter, and a tight group of friends. When a British paparazzo stumbles into her town, though, her new life is threatened. This tense development is almost a subplot, overtaken as it is by Lydia's emotional explorationâhow she was nearing the edge before her "death," how unbearable but necessary it was for her to leave her sons, how she has matured and recovered over the years. The result is a very human rendering of a mythical woman who survives a tumultuous youth to find an aggressively calm middle age.

As the author imagines her, the protagonist of this novel, named Lydia, is Princess Diana, who never died in the Paris motor tragedy but instead is living an uncomplicated life as a dog kennel worker in a small Midwestern town. Emma Fielding's perceptive performance lends believability to the novel's implausibility. She enunciates Lydia/Diana's aristocratic tones, yet one can also hear the character taking on the speech of her new home in America's heartland. Fielding's various accents denote the regional origins and socioeconomic classes of Lydia/Diana's former and current acquaintances. Nicholas Farrell, who portrays the brave soul who conspired in the grand scheme that created Lydia, imparts the character's heartfelt affection for his sovereign. The listener is once again reminded of the frenzied celebrity that plagued Diana. Ali poses the entirely credible query: What if? Riveting, convincing, and compassionate to the end. A.W. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine