From Library Journal
Librarians wanting to offer their patrons unabridged audiobooks may find the selection of shorter recordings limited. Audio Bookshelf's "Voices: A Treasury of Regional American Fiction" series meets this need with two-cassette productions of complete short stories. These latest additions to the series are outstanding and feature six stories by Willa Cather and three stories and a novella by Stephen Crane. The brave, raw towns on the prairie are the setting for Cather's immigrants and Yankees who bring with them long memories and ways of doing things that do not always lead to the smoothest of new starts. By contrast, Crane writes about Eastern city people, from a couple of Gilded Age dandies whose summer boat outing is not what they intend to the disturbing realism of Maggie, "a girl of the streets," who is unable to escape the miserable surroundings of her youth. Narrators Melissa Hughes (Cather and Crane) and Terry Bregy (Crane) read with clarity and vigor, employing ethnic accents without exaggeration and bringing the characters and the settings to life. These recordings will be welcome additions to collections in all public libraries.?Nann Blaine Hilyard, Fargo P.L., N.D.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
Crane's muscular prose and gritty dialogue are well served by Terry Bregy and Melissa Hughes, the readers who take turns narrating these four stories. Although neither is a natural storyteller, both display their talents to best advantage when character voices are needed. And vivid characters abound in Crane's crowded working-class New York, scenes crafted with haiku-like precision. The sounds of drunken despair, savage street banter and raucous love come to us with an immediacy one usually associates with the stage. Listening to this program is akin to leaning out a window in turn-of-the-century New York and eavesdropping on life itself. T.M. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
