A BROTHER'S JOURNEY

Although not meant to be a horror story, the chilling descriptions of the author’s childhood abuse by his mother could be mistaken for those of a Stephen King novel. The woman beat the children, stabbed them with a kitchen knife, made them eat their vomit from the floor, and called the youngest son, David, “It.” Joshua Gates’s mean tone for the drunken woman’s tirades jumps out like a monster from the dark. However, he mollifies the disgusting acts with a soft voice that makes hearing about them tolerable. These clever inflectional changes allow listeners to both hate the mother and suffer for the children. The taciturn pitch used for the abused boy’s thoughts sounds dominated and terrified. A maturation of the boy’s character at the denouement scores a partial victory for good. J.A.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE/JULY 05]