11/22/63

A time-traveling teacher tries to prevent President Kennedy’s assassination but finds the relationship between past and present more complicated than he expected. As the story begins in Lisbon Falls, Maine, narrator Craig Wasson delivers a spirited and thoughtful performance of Jake Epping’s first-person account. Further into the novel, however, Wasson falls headlong into that ever-frustrating pit that looms before King’s narrators: the failure to correctly pronounce one of Maine’s premier cities, Bangor. This introduces into the dialogue the standard inept, overdone imitation of the Downeast accent—and not much better renderings of various Southern tongues. The narrative passages, however, are delivered with care and enthusiasm. R.L.L. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2011]