True at First Light

Who wants to go on an 11-hour audio safari with an aging, ego-bloated Hemingway? That's the immediate drawback to listening to this posthumous memoir-turned-novel (edited into its current form by the legendary author's son Patrick). If anyone is capable of breathing life into Hemingway's late tale of big-game hunting with his wife in East Africa, however, it is Dennehy, one of the finest narrators in the spoken-audio field. Here he works to convey the essential nature of Hemingway's character; he contrasts the sparse elegance of Hemingway's descriptive prose style against the more swaggering posture of his ever-present pride. By the time Hemingway wrote this book, he was well aware of his celebrity, his aura, his powers--was able to flatly say, ""I love command."" Dennehy plays up this self-conscious quality, offering it as a portrait of the author's psyche. It's that sense of performance that makes this audio adaptation spark to life. Based on the 1999 Scribner hardcover. (Aug.)