THE TENTH CIRCLE

Jodi Picoult has an odd trick of cutting away, right when she's set up a scene of earned drama, into somebody's distant memory. After a speech like "Daddy, I killed him!", you don't want the next line to be "Trixie remembers when she was 8 and the snack at Girl Scouts was. . ." The challenge for the narrator is to keep the air in the tires while the story is in neutral. Carol Monda handles these digressions with the same sympathy and enthusiasm that she brings to Picoult's flawlessly plotted story of a family in crisis. If you can't feel deep sympathy for Picoult's morally challenged main characters, it's no fault of this sensitive performance. B.G. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 06]