THE WARLOW EXPERIMENT

Alix Nathan uses many points of view to tell this story, and narrator Mark Meadows does a fine job differentiating them with various voices and accents. The audiobook is set in the late eighteenth century, and its language and story place more emphasis on class distinctions and class enmities than is usually the case in a contemporary novel. Meadows is especially good when Warlow, the subject of a supposed Enlightenment experiment, is left alone in an underground room. The experiment is intended to isolate him from human contact for seven years. Of course, it ends badly for almost everyone involved. Meadows maintains his compassion for all the characters, no matter how mad or lacking in compassion they may be. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2019]