THREE ROOMS

A 20-something well-educated British woman embarks on a futile quest for a home of her own. In a clipped, cultured voice, narrator Jin Lusi portrays the unnamed protagonist's increasing cynicism as she moves from one unsatisfactory living arrangement to another. In a sublet in Oxford, where she is a postdoctoral research assistant, she has encounters with an annoyingly glamorous colleague and a gruff-voiced elderly neighbor. Back in London, the protagonist's meager wages at a gossip magazine allow for only a rented sofa in a smug stranger's flat. Finally, the woman grudgingly returns to her parents' home; in these scenes Lusi gives the mother a sweetly condescending tone. Overall, Lusi's slow pacing and staccato delivery fall short of enlivening this stream-of-consciousness narrative. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2021]