THE ZERO

There's a difficulty with recording a grim satire that has nothing to do with the talent of the narrator. (Christopher Graybill is quite wonderful here, warm and skillful.) Black humor lies in the disjunction between the awful things happening to the protagonist and the reader's perception of how absurd it is. On the page it's comic when Gulliver is captured by tiny Lilliputians, to us, but not to Gulliver. Apparently, on the page this novel of a Kafka-esque version of New York after 9/11 is darkly funny; but to hear it well read is to identify with Walter's protagonist, for whom this alternate universe is terrifying and confusing, physically and morally. Quite brilliant, but clearly different to hear than to read with your eyes. B.G. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 07]