THE ACTUAL

Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow published this novella when he was in his 80s, but the sexual passions are as blind and ravening as those of a robust young man. A tape recorder is employed by one spouse, a gunman by another. The book is quite a performance. The reading is not. A.C. Fellner is a perfectly adequate narrator, and he reads the opening passages with conviction, but when the story deepens and quickens, his voice does not. When two women talk, you can be pretty sure they’re both women, but you can’t tell one from the other. Whereas telling one woman from another is what the novella’s all about. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2009]