TELEPHONE

Bill Andrew Quinn portrays this audiobook's protagonist in a halting style that fits an academic. His deliberate cadence pushes the action forward as the characters' lives unspool. The first-person narrator, Zach Wells, a geologist, is a man who shares chess moves and scientific data but has trouble with his feelings. His life is fraught, to say the least: His father committed suicide, as does a young colleague who didn't get tenure. Most dispiriting of all, his 12-year-old daughter is given a fatal diagnosis. It's little wonder Wells complains, "Some people are no good at being happy." Even an act of grace in the end comes too late and is too unclear to raise the dark clouds that hover over this novel. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2023]