In Memory of Angel Clare

A Novel

By: Christopher Bram

Narrated by: Gary Dikeos

A group of worldly New Yorkers inherit a friend’s last lover.

A year after the AIDS-related death of filmmaker Clarence Laird, known to friends as Angel Clare, his young boyfriend, Michael, is still in deep mourning. Clarence’s older, sophisticated friends—male and female, gay and straight—find themselves the custodians of Michael, a callow kid they never liked much to begin with. What follows is a dark, intimate comedy about real grief and false grief, misunderstanding, friendship, love, and forgiveness.

©1989 Christopher Bram (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Quality writing diinshed by narration

Haunting and troubling writing about a group of friends in the wake of the of the death of one of their members from AIDS. Non of the characters are completely likeable, and the dead man is not treated as a saint, but someone complex and possibly not particularly worthy of grieving.

The enjoyment of the text, though, is greatly diminished by the awful narration. Some words are mispronounced, but it more that the narration fails to do justice the prose. He seems not to be reading so much as merely scanning and voicing without actually taking in the meaning of the words at all.

The character voices take things to the level of farce. The main male voices are not too bad, but the women's voices are dreadful. It makes them feel so obnoxious that one cannot see why the others spend any time with them. Each line of dialogue is increasingly irritating

However, the narrator really displays his failure to understand the text at the most basic level when he gives a bunch of young queens from the worlds of fashion and PR voices that might be more appropriate for a bunch of boxers from Queens. Thick NY accents and low gruff voices. Ludicrous.

It's a shame that writing of this quality is so disrespected, and that listeners are similarly disrespected, that there is no quality control over the audio production.

Great Story

Very good, psychologically authentic real characters, historically accurate. I wish more of Brams books were on Escape.