TURN-ONS AND TURN-OFFS IN CURRENT HOME ENTERTAINMENT RELEASES : Excellent Good Fair Poor : AUDIOCASSETTE

“The House of Mirth” by Edith Wharton. Read by Joanna Cassidy. Listen for Pleasure (two cassettes, abridged). If being rich is heaven, then not being rich is hell, and having once been rich but being rich no longer is the darkest corner of hell--even worse than never having been rich at all. Or so it seems in Wharton’s sharp-tongued 1905 novel about New York society. Its sad, shallow heroine, Lily Bart, is caught, well born but shy of money, in the unpleasant jostlings between mannered old wealth and upward-climbing new wealth. Good sense and rescue both reach her too late, and somehow you mourn a little. Cassidy’s warm and intimate voice and impeccable diction make excellent listening, though the tape also catches every swallow in high fidelity and the abridgement leaves the listener all too aware of the chunks of narrative that have been excised. Information: (800) 843-8404. 1/2