Beautiful Fury


CONTEMPORARY:  Caroline Pritchard is the gallery director for The Daulton Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  She is searching for the artist responsible for creating beautiful glass artwork but isn’t having any luck.  All she knows is that the artist is a man and that he goes by the initials F. W.  The artist Caroline is seeking is Finnegan Walsh, and his sister is Rory Graves.  It takes Caroline a while to learn this, and her first meeting with Finn is unpleasant.  Finn has issues relating to people.  He is bossy and harsh at times but also amazingly creative and inspired.  Caroline is determined to stage a show with Finn’s glasswork, and Finn resists fully, until he discovers something important about his sister.  Finn rages against others, and very few people take it in stride, but both Caroline and Rory have the ability to do so.  Caroline’s acceptance of Finn soothes his fiery nature, yet also sparks his creativity.  Because of this, he creates an amazing piece of art, titled Beautiful Fury, which becomes the focal point of the show.  

The plot for this story is original, and the glassblowing research seems very accurate.  The characters are flawed, yet very credible—especially Finn.  Although it is somewhat slow in a few places, the story flows at a nice pace.  The author and narrator leave the listener wanting to see this beautiful artwork!

The recording quality was good; however, there weren’t a lot of vocal distinctions between the various voices of the female characters.  Fortunately, the author made it very clear which character was speaking, through the words used to describe each scene. 

Carey Sullivan