THE BROTHERS K

A book in need of an editor makes a special problem for a narrator. If you fall in love with a story on the page but tire of the fact that the characters' voices, written or spoken, are improbably sentimental and all share the same tics, you can skip or skim for plot. But the narrator has to read out every tedious repetition, and if you happen not to have fallen in love with the story, every unnecessary "I mean" becomes sand in the spinach. Robertson Dean performs with patience and sincerity. The real problem, for this listener anyway, is that Duncan swings hard at baseball, family love, mysticism, fly-fishing, and Vietnam as if he were rivaling Dostoyevsky but completely fails to compel belief. B.G. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/NOV 08]