Somewhere in Time

Narrator Scott Brick dives into the role of first-person narrator Richard Collier, a television writer dying of a brain tumor who either travels back from 1971 to 1896 to initiate a time-crossed romance or constructs an elaborate and pathetic delusion sparked by his illness. Listeners may be more familiar with the sumptuously romantic 1981 film of the same name, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour; however, what seems like fairy-tale destiny in the adaptation seems more like demented compulsion mixed with wish-fulfillment fantasy in the far more slowly paced original. Brick is so convincing as Richard that listeners may feel claustrophobic spending all those hours trapped in the character's obsessive psyche. A.B.G. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine