NEVER COME MORNING

Nelson Algren, author of MAN WITH A GOLDEN ARM and A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, today languishes in undeserved obscurity. He wrote of Chicago's mean streets in an uncompromisingly sweaty, sinewy style that spoke grittily of his milieu. With his crisp, precise elocution, narrator Barrett Whitener is a bit too civilized for that style, yet in this tale of a would-be boxer and his thwarted dreams he still manages to convey the dark shadows and gray skies that loom over Depression-era alleyways. His characters are as sharp as his diction, particularly young Lefty, our hero, whose naïveté and moral ambivalence render him both predator and prey in what Mike Royko called the "where's mine?" city. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 02]