It’s tough to find the connective tissue that binds together these short stories—except that none of the topics are pleasant. Narrator Bronson Pinchot does a great job with the clarity of the text, though a bit of horror and outrage in his voice would be welcome in some of the more horrible stories, for example, the tale of a wealthy fifteenth-century child killer. The stories jump around in time and space with quirky topics: selfish spies, a WWII soldier missing his girlfriend, avalanches in the Swiss Alps. One is set in the future, when Amsterdam is flooding. Despite the disturbing topics, each story is fascinating. One complaint, however, is the lack of demarcation from the abrupt ending of one story to the beginning of the next. M.S. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
Culling the vastness of experience-from its bizarre fringes and breathtaking pinnacles to the mediocre and desperately below average-like an expert curator, Jim Shepard populates this collection with characters at once wildly diverse and wholly fascinating.
A “black world” operative can't tell his wife a word about his daily activities, but doesn't resist sharing her confidences. A young Alpine researcher is smitten by the girlfriend of his dead brother, killed in an avalanche he believes he caused. An unlucky farm boy becomes the manservant of a French nobleman who's as proud of having served with Joan of Arc as he's aroused by slaughtering children. A free spirit tracks an ancient Shia sect, becoming the first Western woman to travel the Arabian Deserts. From the inventor of the Godzilla epics to a miserable G.I. in New Guinea, each is complicit in his or her downfall and comes to learn that, in love, knowing better is never enough.
Culling the vastness of experience-from its bizarre fringes and breathtaking pinnacles to the mediocre and desperately below average-like an expert curator, Jim Shepard populates this collection with characters at once wildly diverse and wholly fascinating.
A “black world” operative can't tell his wife a word about his daily activities, but doesn't resist sharing her confidences. A young Alpine researcher is smitten by the girlfriend of his dead brother, killed in an avalanche he believes he caused. An unlucky farm boy becomes the manservant of a French nobleman who's as proud of having served with Joan of Arc as he's aroused by slaughtering children. A free spirit tracks an ancient Shia sect, becoming the first Western woman to travel the Arabian Deserts. From the inventor of the Godzilla epics to a miserable G.I. in New Guinea, each is complicit in his or her downfall and comes to learn that, in love, knowing better is never enough.
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940169718102 |
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Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
Publication date: | 03/22/2011 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |