THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LARRY

Seventeen-year-old Joshua Swenson espouses an anti-consumerism, anti-materialism message through the mouthpiece of "Larry" on the Internet. His sermons include researched statistics and influences from Thoreau. When his ideas spawn a national movement and Josh is subsequently discovered, his carefully constructed world falls apart as friends and family try to reconcile the Josh they know with his new personality as Larry. Josh too must confront the difference between his neat philosophies and his tendency to bottle up the most important things he has to say. Jesse Eisenberg gives an excellent performance as a sincere, reflective teenager. His fast reading pace and clipped sentence endings detract only slightly from the narration. J.M.S. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 04]