BITTERSWEET BROOKLYN

A gruesome Mob hit opens this audiobook; then the story flashes back to show how the characters reached this point. Narrator Meredith Starkman highlights a combination of family love and dysfunction in 1930s Brooklyn, delivering an understated performance of this highly emotional novel about a broken Jewish family. After their father dies and their mother becomes inconsolable, the eldest of the four Lorber children, Annie, is expected take over. As the years pass, the family's poverty and Annie's resentment and jealousy of her siblings, Abie, Louis, and Thelma, are well defined by Starkman. She subtly conveys Annie's duplicity, Thelma's innocence, and the boys' criminal behavior. Dickensian in its darkest moments, the novel and Starkman's intelligent narration of it offer insights into the social norms of a bygone era and one family's twisted dynamics. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2018]