THE SECOND COMING

Gail Shalan, who narrates most of this long and flabby novel, is an agile and adept performer. She does fine work shifting from the youthful voice of Jolie Aspern, the primary narrator of this fictional memoir, to the voice of her junkie failure of a father, Ethan. Shalan captures the other lightly drawn characters with subtle shifts of tone and tempo. Ari Fliakos is quite good at presenting Ethan's letters. Overall, the text would have benefited from a stronger editorial hand. Halberg's story of a wayward father's attempt to reconnect with his bipolar daughter has some fine writing and real insights, but the adage "less is more" was never truer or more ignored than in this work. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2024]