DEVOTIONS & DEATH'S DUEL

Jonathan Booth's narration of Donne's prose is quite strong, although it's handicapped by the necessarily limited range of emotions called for by these two works dedicated to the theology of disease and death. In an era when disease was generally understood to be the punishment for sin, Donne interpreted his near-fatal illness as God's retribution for his adventurous early life. (He didn't join the clergy until he was 45.) It would be easy to overemote the underlying despair. But Booth respects the interior logic of the text, gloomy as it is. "Devotions," incidentally, includes the famous "No man is an island" passage. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2024]