The Young Man from Atlanta - Hardcover

This recording of Horton Foote's Pulitzer Prize-winning work is an audiobook that will remind senior listeners of pre-television days when radio drama kept them glued to the Motorola. The principals in this drama about shattered lives are a long married husband and wife-first devastated by the death of their son (was it suicide? was he gay?), then by the loss of the husband's job. David Selby and Shirley Knight recreate their acclaimed stage roles with outstanding audio performances. Equally good are the minor characters who round out this compelling listening experience. T.H. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

The title character of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize play never appears onstage. The implication is strong that he was the lover of Will and Lily Dale Kidder's son Bill. He's a needy young man who extracted from Bill thousands of the dollars Will sent him while he floundered about after World War II service. Even after Bill's suicide, which has devastated Will, the young man has importuned Bill's parents, successfully persuading Lily Dale to give him, unbeknownst to Will, half her savings. Now he's back on the Kidders' doorstep in Houston in 1950, just as Will has been let go from his job of 40 years; has incurred debts as a result of the new house, furnishings, and car he acquired to assuage his grief; and needs every penny he can scrounge. Foote's domestic demitragedy begins with some fairly creaky exposition, settles into a sort of white-bread Arthur Miller groove, and concludes in a welter of doubts about the young man from Atlanta. Ray Olson