The Girls in the Velvet Frame

What a pleasure to have the chance to hear Maureen Lipman (who else could it be?) read this warm and funny family story. Set in Jerusalem just before the First World War, The Girls in the Velvet Frame tells how the five Bernstein sisters set about trying to find their brother Isaac. Gone to build a new life in America, there has been no word from Isaac and even Mrs Bernstein has begun to invent stories to cover for his absence. In some wonderfully over the top, deeply Jewish voices capturing all of Geras’s nuance and wit about characters, Maureen Lipman gives the book a theatricality that the clever plotting and close observation can easily carry. (2 hrs, abridged)