THE GHOST VARIATIONS One Hundred Stories

Kevin Brockmeier's 100 short-short ghost stories are clever and imaginative, so a narrator of sufficient skill and sensitivity would have made this an intriguing audiobook. Vikas Adam has a pleasing enough voice, and in straightforward narration he is listenable--often engaging. But he lacks range and virtuosity. Given a dramatic passage, he resorts too often to melodrama. His character voices are mostly caricatures. The result is a performance that calls attention to the narrator rather than the narrative. Consequently, the stories tend to blend into each other rather than, as intended, progress as a sequence of separate but complementary concepts, images, and moods. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2021]