IN THE FALL

Covering three generations of a racially mixed family, IN THE FALL doesn't fare well as an abridgment. As narrator Lang himself said in a recent AUDIOFILE interview, "It's such a big story, you can hardly fit it into six hours. I think it creates a hunger to read the whole book." Agreed. But then why spend six hours on the abridgment? Lang's voice grips from the first moment a pretty young black girl rescues a wounded Union soldier from dying of his wounds on a Virginia battlefield, but by the time the story reaches modern times, we've lost the characters and the drama we began with. Intentionally or not, the abridgment keeps secrets--like the race of major characters, an important element in a racial story--leaving the reader frustrated and confused. M.C. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 00]