ETERNAL

Scottoline's newest audiobook gives us a high-stakes love triangle set in Mussolini's Rome on the brink of war. Handsome Marco, a proud Fascist working for the party, and sensitive young Jewish scholar Sandro are best friends. Both love Elisabetta. How will this play out as anti-Semitic laws tighten around them and then war itself overtakes them? Unfortunately, someone decided not just to establish place and atmosphere with authentic pronunciation of food and place names, but also to have all the dialogue in this audiobook spoken with spaghetti-sauce-commercial accents. The characters are Italians speaking their native language to each other. Who hears them as having accents? The effect is disturbing and distancing and has certainly prevented these fine actors from doing their best work. What a missed opportunity. B.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2021]