SIDNEY LUMET A Life

Kate Mulligan narrates this first biography of the renowned screenwriter and director Sidney Lumet. Her exceptionally precise enunciation is so much so that it can border on the obsessive, becoming distracting. The author's extensive and thoughtful research, which included exclusive family interviews, yields a work that is carefully written. However, despite Mulligan's appropriate pace, she may not have been the ideal narration choice. Her feminine timbre is often at odds with the highly masculine world of the Hollywood icon who directed, among other highly varied films, the original TWELVE ANGRY MEN. On balance, this Lumet portrait is insightful and entertaining. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2020]