Thirty-somethings Lena and Charlie don’t have it easy. As Three Stages of Amazement begins, they are still mourning the death of an infant daughter while frequently in the ER with baby Willa. Charlie’s high-tech medical start-up keeps him away more than at home, and Lena is overwhelmed trying to juggle her work in TV while caring for the baby and Theo, their preternaturally astute 5-year-old. But the marriage will be further tested as an Italian ex-boyfriend reappears; the boom market of the early 2000s starts to slide; and relatives with bad blood begin interfering. This is the somewhat overloaded premise of Carol Edgarian’s timely and well-played love story.

Noted actress Anne Twomey brings Lena’s intelligence and passion to the forefront, making her attractiveness to the men in the novel easy to understand. Despairingly lonely, she is also resentful of her role holding down the fort while her brilliant and compassionate doctor husband, who is utterly devoted to her and their children, sees to their fiscal future. When Charlie responds to a business offer by Lena’s despised Uncle Cal, a ruthlessly successful investment titan, not only is her anger inflamed, but her passion too. Alessandro, her ex, pops up at the same time, perfectly positioned for seduction and a cash infusion, too, given his position in Cal’s firm. ‘Sandro’s plummy Italian accent, courtesy of Twomey, and poetic sensuality generate plenty of romantic suspense. (In fact Twomey vocally sketches everyone from the Guatemalan nanny to Charlie’s salt-of-the-earth Back Bay business partner with convincing nuance.)

With Twomey’s gruff, barking delivery, Cal is a clearly defined misanthrope and ‘Top Dog’, taking on big stakes strategies and internecine traps. It’s a very Madoff milieu (Bernie’s name is dropped several times) and Cal’s wife Iris inhabits it with gusto, hosting, for example, an over-the-top party featuring Al and Tipper at which Norah Jones performs. Yet it is in Iris’ journey in the final chapters of her life (and the novel), in her search to understand herself as mother, wife, and individual, that the novel gains dramatic poignancy.

Three Stages of Amazement is storytelling that makes for good listening, thanks to Twomey’s contributions. And it offers an effective portrait of a just-elapsed cultural moment in American 21st century life. Elly Schull Meeks