THE SOCIETY OF OTHERS

Describing a book as an existential, even spiritual, thriller may not make the crowds come running, but here both author and reader do their best to keep things moving. A series of nearly random events catapults the unnamed English hero into an Eastern European country populated by the damned and run by evil thugs. Glen McCready narrates in a cool, neutral style that fits well with the book's ambiguities. McCready is masterful with the Czecho-Rumanian accent, even (slightly) distinguishing between various characters in the unnamed land where the unnamed hero fetches up. Further, he rises to the challenge of a first-person narrator going from cool, cynical adolescence to fully engaged, passionate maturity. R.M.C. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 05/ JAN 06]