Here's another memoir that I listened to during my commuting hours. I picked it off the library CD shelves because my mother had belonged to a neighborhood bridge club, and we thus had our own batch of "bridge ladies" show up at our house, when I was growing up. The author and I are in the same age range, too, so I figured that I might be able to relate to some of her experiences. I was mostly right.

Betsy Lerner is a literary agent and a former editor who also earned an MFA in Poetry at Columbia. It turns out that I own her previous writing book, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers (Riverhead Books, 2000). I underlined a lot of good points that she made in that one.

But, of course, this new offering is a memoir and it therefore represents a different kind of writing. Like many Baby Boomers growing up, Betsy has not been close with her mother Roz. Mostly she rebels, interpreting each one of Roz's comments as a criticism. (Preaching to the choir here, Betsy.) Such polite distancing continues throughout the years as Betsy marries, moves and works in New York City. It isn't until her husband gets a job in New Haven, Connecticut, that Betsy reluctantly relocates with him back to her hometown. Suddenly she is the nearest one of the three daughters, living only minutes away from her mother. Betsy is now in her 50s, and Roz is in her 80s. Is it possible for them to start a new kind of relationship?

One avenue may be through the game of bridge. For 50 years, Roz has been part of a group of five women who meet each Monday to play bridge. (The fifth and "extra" person is included just in case someone else can't make it.) Betsy has fond memories of these bridge ladies coming to the Lerner house on every fifth Monday: Bea, Bette, Jackie, Rhoda and, of course, Roz. Amazingly enough, they're all still at it. Betsy begins to join them each Monday. She begins to take lessons in bridge playing at local community centers, too. She also begins to interview each bridge lady separately, to take the time to learn more about their lives.

Of course, her own mother is the one Betsy wants the most answers from. This is the perfect opportunity for her to ask the questions that were never asked before -- especially the ones about their own history. This includes a rare conversation about a family tragedy from 1964, which has remained untouched for decades. Is it possible for this mother and daughter to find some sort of connection now?

The audio version of The Bridge Ladies consists of seven discs that translate into nine hours of narration. This is the first memoir I've listened to in which the narrator is not the author. It's thrown me off course. I thought I had specifically scoured the library's CD cases for the phrase, "Read by the author." I must have looked at this cover wrong.

Here, the narration is supplied by Orlagh Cassidy, a veteran actress known as "the dialect queen." She does an OK job overall. She was obviously hired so that she could imbue the bridge ladies' conversations with accents that mimic their metro New York and/or Jewish roots. Still, I couldn't help but wonder, often: Would Betsy have voiced a passage in the same way? And, do the ladies really talk like this, or is this just a stereotype? It's one thing to use dialects for fictional characters. For real-life ones, though: How do you know that's how they talk? Did you interview each one of them? Or did the author share her recordings with the narrator?

I think readers might be better off imagining the accents on their own from the printed pages themselves, than by listening to this one. A few English words even challenge Cassidy. She mispronounces "anathema" twice; and also mispronounces "forsythia," and at least one or two other words. I learned my lesson here. I will not listen to any memoir that is read by someone other than the author. Period.

Otherwise, The Bridge Ladies is a moderately amusing diversion. Baby Boomers can relate to the differences with their Greatest Generation parents. They may also understand the need to go back home and to ask the questions that need to be asked, before it's too late. Any daughter of any age who has had a stressful relationship with her mother will nod at this story, for sure. You don't have to be steeped in Jewish culture yourself to get this one.