Royal Highness

Written shortly after the Nobel laureate's 1905 marriage, this satiric novel seems infused with a bridegroom's optimism. Prince Klaus Heinrich falls for the American Miss Spoelmann. In the course of his wooing he spurns his moldy, authoritarian Old World values for New World vigor, just as Europe at large would eventually do. Robert Whitfield strikes the right tongue-in-cheek approach from the first line and sustains it with witty impersonations of the characters. Unfortunately, he stumbles over some of the more complex Germanic locutions, and tedium sometimes creeps into his voice. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine