THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS

Pepys's candid diaries are important for what they tell us about life in Restoration London, AND delightful reading, for the author had a lively mind, a keen eye, and a strong personality. Abridger Pearson Phillips has chosen the excerpts well for this volume. With admirable vigor, narrator Michael Maloney tries to give a sense of Pepys's development over the tumultuous decade that the secret journals cover. But he seems distracted, as if struggling with the seventeenth-century diction, and comes off a bit flat and awkward. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 03]