Barn Blind

Five Cassette, 7.5 hours. Suzanne Toren has such a rich, enveloping voice that for a moment I thought "this must be my mother, in which case the novel must be a children's book." Barn Blind is not a children's book, and after the bump of momentary disorientation, Toren's reading is superb. Justly famous for deep and entirely believable characterization, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley builds her story around Kate Karlson, the ambitious, beautiful, fading mother of four. Kate runs a horse farm. She cares passionately about the success of her horses and her children in that order. Was tragedy brought on by this woman's ambition? B.H.C. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine