The Keep by Jennifer Egan Read by Jeff Gurner & Geneva Carr (listened 11/2009)

 Two boys that grew up together, Howard and Danny, cousins—sort of, meet up in the U.K. as adults for a potential business venture at a castle. Danny is filled with guilt about what he did to Howard when they were kids and worries if Howard is going to bring the incident up.

The author leads the listener through scenarios where the narrative vacillates from the explanations of a children’s book to adult level dialogue. The crisis of the group being trapped in the dungeon beneath the keep was the thrilling part of this book. Jeff Gurner’s narrative and character voices work for this piece, mostly, with a few odd inflections on occasion. Then the story ventures in the end to an epilogue that for the most part seemed disconnected from the other part of the story and adding to that, read by a different narrator, Geneva Carr, that disengaged the listener from the story mostly. At first, I thought it was an excerpt from a coming book. Rating: Almost-Choke

Tags: audiobook review, The Keep