Alice Adams

by Booth Tarkington, Gary MacFadden (Read by), Scott Cluthe (Read by)

Overview

This Pulitizer Prize-winning novel, perhaps Tarkington's best, tells the story of a middle-class family living in the industrialized "midland country" at the turn of the 20th century. Alice Adams's resiliency of spirit makes her one of Tarkington's most compelling female characters.

About the Author:
Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis in 1889. He was a consummate interpreter of the Hoosier scene and a conscious booster of his native state, as evidenced in his best-selling Penrod adventures, Seventeen, and The Gentleman from Indiana. He was also, however, a serious and highly regarded writer, winning the Pulitzer Prize for the Magnificent Ambersons and for Alice Adams.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798874753375
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	04/09/2024
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Booth Tarkington (1869–1946), who achieved overnight success with his first novel, The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), is perhaps best remembered as the author of the popular Penrod adventures and Seventeen. He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes for Literature and in 1933 received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Traci Svendsgaard is a veteran of a twenty-five year voice-over career. In addition, she and her husband, Lars, host The Retro Lounge on Jefferson Public Radio. They live a simple life in Southern Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

In Alice Adams Booth Tarkington momentarily ceased his detached contemplation of the foibles of youth and wrote a highly subjective story of an American family. Without abandoning his great gift for exposing the comic details of adolescent behavior, he was able to regard Alice’s difficulties with interior sympathy and understanding.”

New York Times

Tarkington’s story of ambition and delusion…still packs a punch.”

AudioFile

Over the pictures, the vases, the old brown plush rocking-chairs and the stool, over the three gilt chairs, over the new chintz-covered easy chair and the gray velure sofa—over everything everywhere, was the familiar coating of smoke and grime.... Yet here was not fault of housewifery; the curse could not be lifted, as the ingrained smudges permanent on the once white woodwork proved. The grime was perpetually renewed; scrubbing only ground it in.

From the Publisher

Tarkington’s story of ambition and delusion in an unnamed Midwestern town in the early twentieth century won a Pulitzer in 1922. It still packs a punch, though it hasn’t aged as well as some other works of the period, for instance, the novels of Sinclair Lewis. Traci Svendsgaard makes unfortunate choices in her reading that do nothing to minimize the dated quality of the dialogue. For no discernable reason, she plays the characters with exaggerated Southern country yokel accents, such that "well" becomes “way-ell,” and so forth. Flirty Alice is a complex character, but she’s presented here like a music hall ingénue with a most irritating wheedle to her voice. The story wins over the performance, but it could have been better served. B.G. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2008 - AudioFile