THE RAPTURE OF CANAAN

Overlong, overwritten, unsatisfactorily resolved, The Rapture of Canaan requires considerable commitment and extraordinary suspension of disbelief. Yet, despite its shortcomings, this audiobook may keep you listening, and that's owing to the brilliant reading by Kathleen O'Malley, whose rendering of this tale of a fundamentalist Christian commune is outstanding. She captures fully the uncertainty of first-person narrator Ninah, a 15-year-old who becomes pregnant with boyfriend James, but adroitly lets many of her fellow millenarians think that Jesus fathered her baby. O'Malley is equally adept with the other characters, particularly with Grampa Herman's religious harangues to his followers. The bottom line remains, however: Better read than written. T.H. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: JAN 98]