While my friends planned spring break trips, I took marvelous audio adventures, following fascinating character to distant locations and even other times.
Alessandra Ceecchi is the main character of Sarah Dunant's The Birth of Venus (Random House Audio, $29.95; abridged, five CDs, six hours) She would rather paint than marry, but being a young woman of the Florence Renaissance, she is married off to a mysterious older man. Later she learns his homosexuality puts him in an even more precarious situation than hers. The setting of high art and political-religious upheaval create a dramatic listen which is enhanced by Jenny Sterling's elegant diction and timing.
New York is the setting for Adriana Trigiani's Lucia, Lucia (Random House Audio, $29.95, abridged, five CDs, six hours). Kit, a writer, discovers the intriguing story of her elderly neighbor beginning when the beautiful twenty-five year old Lucia, daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer, chooses her fashion career over a traditional marriage with a man who loves her. Lucia finally finds romantic love, is jilted, and then says ciao to her profession because of her ailing mother. Kit, enchanted with this story, brings love back into Lucia's life. The audio gives a vivid sense of life in the fifties as reader Mira Sorvino bounds through the decades, joys, and troubles of the captivating main character.
Alexander McCall Smith fans will be pleased with the new Mma Ramotswe audio, The Full Cupboard of Life (Recorded Books, $24.99, unabridged, five cassettes, seven and three-quarters hours). Mma Ramotswe, the owner of the No. 1 Ladies Detective agency, seeks to understand the mystery of men as she investigates a wealthy woman's four possible suitors and she wonders when her own fiancé, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, will wed her. Smith again delivers on the wonderful funny, touching, and thoughtful interludes his fans treasure. Lisette Lecat reads with accents that make for easy listening. She has an obvious zeal for the book and its characters.
Edwidge Danticat's tells a number of linked stories from different viewpoints in The Dew Breaker (Recorded Books, $24.99, unabridged, five cassettes, six and three-quarters hour). Each story is complete within itself, unique in the telling, and contributes to the picture of the "dew breaker", a torturer during the Haitian dictatorship of the 1960's. Danticat's words are sometimes simple, other times beautiful, always surprising. Robin Mills, the reader, an Associate Professor of Speech and Dialects at SUNY, shows her expertise in a dialect-rich performance.
Jhumpa Lahiri' writes of two generations of transitions in The Namesake (Random House Audio, $34.95, unabridged, six cassettes, 10 hours). The Gangulis have a difficult adjustment moving from India to America soon after their arranged marriage. While Ashoke goes off to work, Ashima searches for Indian food items and some kind of familiarity. Decades later, their son faces an entirely different set of issues growing up between two cultures, trying to discern his loyalties to his family, his Indian background, and his own needs. Sarita Choudhury's ease with Indian and Western accents and her transitions from one to the other make for a fluid reading.
Find family listening in Chitra Banerjee's The Conch Bearer, (Listening Library, $26.00, unabridged, four cassettes, six hours). Twelve-year-old Anand is suffering from physical and spiritual poverty on the crowded streets of Kolkata, India. He longs for magic and it comes to him when a mystical man of unknown age and origin tells him of a quest to return a magical conch to its spiritual home miles and trials away. With Nisha, a wise homeless girl, Anand takes on this difficult quest. Alan Cumming's lilting accents give a sense of place and drama.