YOU AIN'T GOT NO EASTER CLOTHES

This autobiographical audiobook written by acclaimed singer/songwriter Laura Love is not a story for the faint-hearted. Love's nightmare childhood revolves around her mother's mental illness, foster homes, orphanages, and the prevalent racism of the early 1960s. This memoir needs a masterful narrator to help the listener empathize with these children and their mother. Unfortunately, Sharon Washington is not that person. Rather than draw the listener to the characters, Washington's reading is distanced, more emotionally detached than all embracing. Washington has a fine reading voice, but it lacks the maturity and compassion necessary to make this horrific story palatable. P.R. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/ JUL 06]