NAILING IT

Norman Dietz doesn’t so much tell these stories from his boyhood as get possessed by them. They’re so intense that it seems like he’s reliving these important memories, both the greatly amusing ones, like the car wreck that shut down the town or the time the puppeteers walked out of the Oddfellows’ variety show, and the dark ones, primarily the death of his father. Reminiscent of Garrison Keillor in his folksiness, Dietz has a tone and delivery that are all his own--though many of his expressions are taken, appropriately, from the voices of the community he’s talking about. G.T.B. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 06]