cover image Model Home

Model Home

Eric Puchner, read by David Colacci, Tantor Media, unabridged, 12 CDs, 15.5 hrs., $39.99 ISBN 978-1-4001-1652-2

Puchner's darkly comic coming-of-age tale offers a complex array of takes on 1980s California: worshipful, acidic, and all points between. Warren and Camille Ziller and their three children have moved from the Midwest to Southern California in search of the blissful American dream, but find, instead, a kind of collective unraveling. Shuttling between parents and children, bedrooms and beaches, Puchner's novel is read by the charming David Colacci, who is attentive to the story's brutality, its pathos, and its stinging comedy. Colacci lazily ambles his way through, his lackadaisical tone belying the conscientiousness of his reading and the slowly spreading melancholy of Puchner's book. A Scribner hardcover (Reviews, Dec. 14). (Apr.)