THE HALF LIFE

The music that introduces and closes this story invites the listener into a French cafe, but the listener never makes it to Paris. The night before Piper heads off on a business trip to Paris, her husband announces he’s leaving. At the airport, with her flight grounded due to Iceland’s volcanic ash, Piper finally faces the reality she’s been ignoring for a year. Katie Finneran narrates this novella with the exasperated voice of someone so self-involved as to be indignant at this inopportune shake-up of her world. Finneran creates a vivid snapshot of a totally self-absorbed career woman. One could feel sympathy for her husband and daughter if only one knew them well enough to care. But the author gives Finneran nothing to work with there. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2011]