cover image A Visit from the Goon Squad

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan, read by Roxana Ortega, BBC Audio, unabridged, eight CDs, 10 hrs., $29.95 ISBN 978-1-60283-915-1

In reading this novel of interconnected lives at the fringes of the music industry, Roxana Ortega freights her breathy voice with the moral confusion and sadness of Egan's disaffected, dismayed characters. A surprisingly supple instrument, Ortega's voice can drop to a gruff near-growl, and she craftily uses her range to convey the feeling of the bottom dropping out of the characters' lives. A Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 22). (June)