THE HYPOCRITE

As an audiobook, Hamya's low-key novel might easily have employed two narrators--or even a third. The action revolves around the opening of Sophia's play, which is attended by her father, a novelist who is appalled when he finds himself depicted as a crass philanderer while they were on their vacation together in Italy when Sophia was a teenager. During the performance Sophia is having lunch with her divorced mother, thereby providing an additional point of view. In this subtle narrative Claire Kinson proves a unifying agent, tying together the novel's looser threads and providing a defining voice. That voice is neither silken nor rough, and more art than melody. But Kinson, a charmer, effectively enlivens the novel's sly approach to its two opposing yet oddly similar points of view. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2024]