RUTHERFORD PARK

This splendid audiobook is a welcome addition to the Downton Abbey/Upstairs, Downstairs school of English narrative. Elizabeth Sastre’s sensitive and skillful performance is remarkable as she moves fluently among the class-revealing voices of the privileged family of the house and the “downstairs” tones of the Yorkshire dales. Set in the period just before WWI, Cooke’s story inevitably shares similarities with others of its ilk but completely holds its own. She is concerned here with the devastating social inequality of the period by which a stained reputation posed terrible dangers for women while men sinned with impunity. Sastre, a wizard with accents, makes the characters who experience this peril—from the mistress of the house to the seduced and abandoned kitchen maid—vivid and human. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2013]