THE SHIFTING FOG

In honeyed tones Caroline Lee offers up the memories of Grace Bradley, a 98-year-old who recounts a summer in the 1920s that changed the lives of everyone connected to Riverton Manor. When a modern-day filmmaker urges Grace to remember what life was like for her as a lady's maid, she spares no detail recreating life above and below stairs. Lee delicately relates Grace's remembrances of a young poet's alleged suicide and the sisters who witnessed it, the social turbulence brought about by WWI, and the numerous convoluted relationships that define this sprawling saga. Lee's reading is intelligent and sympathetic, managing a clear sense of place and creating a believable distance between period diction and contemporary speech. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 07]