The Messiah of Morris Avenue

Tony Hendra, Author, John Bedford Lloyd, Read by , read by John Bedford Lloyd. Audio Renaissance $29.95 (0p) ISBN 978-1-59397-918-8

Hendra's black-comic Christian fundamentalist dystopia is read with a straight face and a glint in the eye by Lloyd. Lloyd himself sounds like one of the masculinist preachers who run America in Hendra's tale of fundamentalism run amok, his deep leading-man's voice occasionally dropping to a shivery whisper implying forthright conviction. If Lloyd's reading occasionally stays at the same level, it is apropos for Hendra's novel, in which a formerly raucous free society has been dampened by a wet blanket of religious disapproval and smiley-face family values. Lloyd must balance the opposing forces battling in Hendra's story: the spirit-sucking forces of a rigorously fundamentalist society, and the energy of a reborn Christ, now a soft-spoken Hispanic healer. Lloyd's reading makes it clear that he gets the joke and does a fair job of transmitting some of Hendra's impassioned religious conviction as well. Simultaneous release with the Henry Holt hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 16). (Apr.)

Reviewed on: 05/01/2006
Release date: 04/01/2006

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Hardcover - 245 pages - 978-0-8050-7964-7

Hardcover - 343 pages - 978-0-7862-8721-5

Paperback - 245 pages - 978-0-312-42539-5

Compact Disc - 978-0-7927-4019-3

Open Ebook - 256 pages - 978-1-4299-0047-8