FRENCH WINDOWS

This English translation of a French novella imagines the lives of strangers in an apartment building as described by their neighbor Nathalia in letters to her therapist. Narrator Alex Wyndham embodies the series of characters who tell their stories--or are they all Nathalia revealing herself to her therapist and the listener through first-person fiction? Some of Wyndham's choices work well with that ambiguity, while others are confusing. His renderings of characters' thoughts in distinct English accents that match each one's class and personality are effective and entertaining. His switches to French accents for dialogue, however, are jarring. The accents make the story needlessly hard to follow but succeed in highlighting the disconnect between each character's inner and outer self. V.G. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2025]