THE GLASS ROOM

Narrator Jefferson Mays delivers a family epic that spans several generations, beginning in pre-WWII Europe. In Czechoslovakia, Viktor and Liesel Landauer build their dream house, but as political events unfold all around them, the Jewish couple must abandon the house. The novel weaves their stories and those of several figures who subsequently live in the house. Mays’s tone, clipped and cold in places, reflects the spread of fascism and the impending war. He also conveys the sexual tension that emanates from the very start of the story. Despite the novel’s rambling sentence structure, he gives credible voice to the characters with purposeful enunciation of German-accented English. M.R. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2011]