NASHVILLE CHROME

NASHVILLE CHROME may be a good book, but it doesn’t shine as an audiobook despite—or perhaps because of—being a novel about sound itself. A fictionalized account of the Browns, a country music group whose fame rivaled Elvis Presley’s, the story offers few opportunities for Debra Monk to ply her skills as a performer. Inconsequential scenes are drawn out while important moments are underdeveloped or absent. Furthermore, the sparse dialogue does little to lift Monk’s work above a simple reading. The audio medium tends to amplify both a printed book’s strengths and its shortcomings, and this book’s flaws, when held up to the ear, are difficult to ignore. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2011]