Prater Violet

Christopher Isherwood tells a story that both follows and overlaps the stories of GOODBYE TO BERLIN (best known in the musical adaptation of CABARET). The young novelist is dragooned into working on a film with Friederich Bergman, an Austrian director who draws him into friendship and a new engagement with the world and the politics of Europe in 1933. Paul Boehmer's reading is, in parts, better than the book, particularly in a passage in which Bergman works out his outrage by acting out parts of the Reichstag fire trial. We still hear Bergman's voice, but it is Bergman doing impressions of the trial's principals, and it is a wonderful passage of voice work. Even less well-known Isherwood is interesting, and this rendition of the book is all you could hope for. D.M.H. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine