THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS

King's richly detailed and closely packed narrative is a feast for mind and ear, and Tristan Layton's cultivated British and impeccable French bring to life all the glamour and folly of France's doomed Second Empire. The range of characters, events, and moods requires not so much a range of inflections as it does consistency and a defined pitch, around which the narrative's elements can cohere. These Layton supplies with singular ease and fluidity. Immediately his voice becomes the voice of the text and sustains a dramatic tension that holds the attention and subtly shapes and inflects the narrative. Even the paintings, many imprinted in memory but many unfamiliar, come to life in this extraordinary audio experience. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/ JUL 06]