SUMMERHOUSE, LATER

These nine "literary" stories, leaning heavily toward the surreal, have been extravagantly praised in Europe.  For all I know they may have lost something in the translation from the German; they seem to this reader more anomic and uninvolving than masterful, stark, and poetic, as others have found them.  Of the three readers, Alyssa Bresnahan and Peter Jay Fernandez are excellent, while Alexandra O'Karma's velvet and throaty delivery doubles the already lugubrious effect of the work itself in a way that is either deeply appropriate, or unbearable, depending on your taste for this sort of thing.  B.G. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 02/ JAN 03]