BECOMING BELLE

Nuala O'Connor imagines the real life of Belle Bilton, star of the music hall in late-nineteenth-century London, who marries above her station only to have to defend the marriage when her father-in-law tries to engineer a divorce. Narrator Jayne Entwistle's lovely English accent captures Belle's charm and her resolve to overcome adversity--an untitled birth, a relationship with a fraudulent American baron, an out-of-wedlock child, and an unwanted divorce adjudicated by an all-male jury. Entwistle expertly straddles the line of conveying the self-absorption of Belle's thoughts while retaining the listener's desire to see this plucky girl triumph over the men. Entwistle does it all--Victorian slang, an American pretender, a crusty judge, Irish lawyers, and a myriad of distinctive characters with class accents that range from Cockney to posh. A.B. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2019]