SUDDEN RAIN

Barbara Rosenblat never disappoints as a narrator. She voices characters with the best of them--check out her reading of a scene between a stoned hippie and an African-American sixties radical. But even more impressive is what she adds between the lines-in this case, a sense of weariness, despair, and mistrust--as when Nan, one of the truly desperate housewives in this novel, explains, "I feel like I'm in quicksand and there's nothing I can reach out to take hold of." Wolff's story of deteriorating Los Angeles families in the 1970s has a few weaknesses, but, as is the case with many audiobooks, great narration overcomes the obstacles. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 05/ JAN 06]