Decline and fall A novel

Every once in a while a reviewer receives an audiobook that is an unmitigated joy. This performance by the talented Royal Shakespeare veteran Michael Maloney takes a very funny and incisive book--Waugh's (Brideshead Revisited, Audio Reviews, LJ 6/15/91) first and least flawed novel--and brings it to life with a collection of endlessly imaginative and perfectly apt voices. The novel, set in the 1920s, tells of a young theology student who finds himself teaching at a small Welsh boarding school after being booted out of Oxford for indecent behavior. How this young fellow, Paul Pennyfeather, becomes an unknowing accomplice in the white slave trade makes for hilarious listening. If your library adds only one complete audiobook this year, make it Decline and Fall.Preston Hoffman, Shelby, N.C.(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.