PURGE

This complex and powerful tale of survival in Estonia under the Soviets won the Nordic literature prize in 2010 for Oksanen. The plotting cuts back and forth in time until events in the past fully illuminate the present, which is effective unless you miss the title for any section telling where you are in time and place. If you do, you are lost far longer than if you could flip back a page, and it happens more than it should because the sound levels in this production veer widely from fine to dramatic but inaudible whispering. Sian Thomas’s performance is excellent, although I wonder if an Estonian accent should really sound so Swedish, but inaudibility, whether a performance or a production flaw, is a problem. B.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2012]