ZEKE AND NED

An unabridged novel of this length (460-plus pages) would normally consume 14 or more cassettes. By racing through it, Barrett Whitener fits it on to 12. How someone can read that fast and still skillfully voice the characters and give meaning to the lines is so miraculous that one suspects some electronic tampering. A pity! Haste destroys much of the book's pastoral lyricism. Whitener errs again in trying to give his protagonists a generic twang in lieu of the appropriate idiom. The reader's intelligence and exuberance almost compensate for these faults, but not quite. Y.R. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT 97]