A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS

When the author's parents die of cancer within five weeks of each other during his senior year of college, he finds himself the guardian of his younger brother. They move from Chicago to California, and the culture shock provides the impetus for this memoir. Narrator Dion Graham has a deep voice that is both riveting and unsettling. His performance harkens back to the days of the Beat Poets by transforming the words on a page into a vibrant experience complete with character voices, rhythmic paragraphs, and asides that sound like run-on sentences but are actually thoughts and feelings and jokes and, well, life. It's a tour de force for Graham and Eggers, and a golden opportunity for listeners everywhere. R.I.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2010]