The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

Edoardo Ballerini's performance of this exhilarating novel may be a personal best for him, and that's saying a lot. The text is an unreliable narrative by an unnamed writer who is either telling you his own story or letting you read his fictions; you rarely know which for sure, and you sometimes can't tell if he knows himself. The relationships of fiction to lying and to truth are obviously the subject here. So are young love, artistic rivalry, friendship, literary homage, fame, and the process of writing. Hardest to describe is how utterly satisfying, in the most old-fashioned way, these bravura-pleated stories-within-stories are, and how smoothly Ballerini inhabits Jansma's continuously transforming characters. Surely this entrancing book and impeccable production will rank among the year's best. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine