LOVE

Eleanor Bron's voice adapts itself to whatever background a novelist tries to describe. If there is an audio synonym for the word "painterly," that word is what happens when she reads. In this work, she transports us to a simpler life in 1925, when Catherine, who is 42, meets Christopher, 25, at a London theater. He becomes enchanted by her and then falls deeply into love with this woman, who has already been a wife and a mother. Because of the repeated details of the stringent manners and morals of society in those years, one might think that the novel could be abridged. Even though this is possible, the very repetition places us in those times when hardly a car passed in the street, and a telephone bell was a rare sound. J.P. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 02]