FRENCH EXIT

Lorna Raver is giving a master class in vocal technique in this audiobook, in which an eccentric mother and son who have spent all their money but feel entitled to continue to live like the .01 percent abscond to Paris. Raver's French accent is excellent, a bonus, but the really dazzling work is in her distinguishing between two elderly, equally harebrained American widows of the same age, which she can manage in two words, then her silky downshift to the voice of a female American clairvoyant 30 years younger, again making age and class clear two words in. How? The book itself may strike some as a diverting fantasy about drunk, crazy rich people. Or it may simply seem unbearably twee. Raver at least is first-rate. B.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2018]