GILGAMESH

This is a hard book to have patience with. A girl living on a failing and isolated farm in western Australia turns up pregnant by a man we never saw her fall in love with, insists on keeping the child, then insists on taking the baby on a wild goose chase to find the father, though there's no reason to believe she can or that he will care if she does. This quest takes her into Armenia in the teeth of WWII against all advice or common sense. London is a fine describer, but that doesn't make her a teller of a believable story. Deirdre Rubenstein's reading is, by contrast, admirably artful and persuasive. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/ JUL 04]