The Horizontal Man

A Library of America Audiobook Classic

By: Helen Eustis

Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat

Helen Eustis’s The Horizontal Man (1946) won an Edgar Award for best first novel and continues to fascinate as a singular mixture of detection, satire, and psychological portraiture. A poet on the faculty of an Ivy League school is found murdered, setting off ripple effects of anxiety, suspicion, and panic in the hot house atmosphere of an English department rife with talk of Freud and Kafka. This classic novel is one of eight works included in The Library of America's two-volume edition Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s, edited by Sarah Weinman.

Hardly Worth It

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Dated; but saved by a bravura performance.

What could Helen Eustis have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

(what an inane question!)

What does Barbara Rosenblat bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Drama and humor

Any additional comments?

Yeah - don't ask the question "What could THE AUTHOR have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?"

It's too stupid a notion - from every conceivable angle - to consider.

Exquisite Reading

The narrator gave by far the most accurate rendering of any audio book I have ever listened to. It was a pleasure to appreciate her superb reading and character interpretation as well.
The writing was compelling page after page; an especial delight was reading descriptions of life in the period including small things like noting multiple daily mail deliveries.