THE DARK DARK Stories

Narrator Christa Lewis draws on a pleasant range of pitch and texture to give individual voice to each character in this story collection. Using accents sparingly but appropriately, she adds a layer that would be missed by a visual reader. Only in the last story, "The Story of Of," does the listening experience fall short: On the page, you can see the column of text narrowing, reminding you that you're reading a story within a story within a story. The listener doesn't have this visual guide, and it can be difficult to keep one's mental place within the frames. Overall, however, Lewis's voice and performance are a good match for these quiet, tense stories with their themes of melancholy and desperation. D.L.Y. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2017]