RICEYMAN STEPS

English novelist Arnold Bennett wrote the "kitchen sink" variety of fiction--stories about ordinary people doing ordinary things. In one of his most admired efforts, set shortly after the Great War, a miserly shopkeeper marries a widow and lets his stinginess get the better of both of them. Liberal dollops of humor and well-observed characters overlay an unremittingly bleak atmosphere. The trajectory of torturous marital doom is evident from the very first pages. The listener feels the most sympathy for their char, Elsie, who is in love with an incapacitated veteran. Narrator Peter Joyce understands, appreciates, and conveys every mote of nuance, personality, humor, pathos, and angst in a reading just short of brilliant. Nonetheless, the story's gloom prevails. Y.R. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2008]