THE HIGHEST TIDE

Miles O'Malley is another one of those precocious fictional young people whose personality is expressed through an obsession--Miles's is with Rachel Carson and the sea around him. He is also, conveniently, a 13-year-old insomniac, so he spends a lot of his nights on the water; one night he finds a giant squid, still alive, and becomes a local hero. Fisher Stevens gives this first-person character an appropriately young and "gee whiz" timbre as he ponders his parents' crumbling marriage, his crush on the older Angie, the disagreeable nature of celebrity, and his "best friend," the elderly curmudgeon Florence. The production is simple but polished and authoritative; the gobbets of undigested Carson are not wholly convincing, but plenty interesting. B.G. 2006 Audie Award Finalist © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 06]