Sister Carrie

Dreiser's first novel was suppressed for its relatively amoral depiction of a golddigger's rise and the concomitant fall of her lover. The book remains interesting for its historical importance, period detail and sinewy depiction of the big-shouldered city in the 1890's. At 500 pages, it's a lot to swallow in the dry Books on Tape house style of narration. Given that limitation--or virtue, to some ears--Rebecca Burns plays for clarity, enunciating crisply and phrasing precisely. She succeeds so well that this reviewer found himself more attentive to her narration than to either the original book or the sanitized film version with Lawrence Olivier. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine