AudioBooksReview

Nineteen Eighty-four, by George Orwell

2009-10-11T14:28:00.006+01:00

read by Philip Glenister

First published, amazingly, sixty years ago and pinpointing a date that itself has passed some twenty-five years, Nineteen Eighty-four is arguably the most prescient and terrifying novel of the twentieth century.

Written, Orwell explained, 'directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism', Nineteen Eighty-four might well be a set book for GCSE and A-level English Literature students, but its analysis of political and social futures should be a warning to us all and required reading alongside Naomi Wolf's The End of America.

Television's abuse of the term 'Big Brother' is a misfortune; thinking that Orwell's predictions are no longer of relevance will be a disaster. O'Brien's description of the future should reverberate in the collective consciousness: 'There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face ... for ever.'

Winston Smith is Orwell's Everyman and in what can be taken as a conventional love story Orwell warns post-Second World War readers of how society might well disintegrate into hate, propaganda, surveillance and control.

Perhaps it already has.

Nineteen Eighty-four is a masterpiece of English writing and the words viscerate on the page. But, read with the compelling skill and gravitas of Philip Glenister, we are transfixed by Orwell's brilliance.

Priceless.

* * * *

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Even Money, by Dick Francis and Felix Francis

2009-10-11T14:20:00.008+01:00

read by Martin Jarvis

Dick Francis' success is justly earned: few writers can so surely be depended on for that well-crafted, well-researched, gripping and entertaining journey that is the crime novelist's art. The sporting milieu is well-trodden, but never dull, and I'm sure Francis has introduced many a new racegoer to the sport through his novels, even though horseracing seems to be full of the most untrustworthy individuals with whom you could ever have the misfortune to become entangled.

Even Money is no exception. Bookmaker Ned Talbot's world is thoroughly turned upside down when a man approaches him while he is taking bets at Royal Ascot and introduces himself as his father - a father he had been told all his life had died in a car crash when he was a baby. In characteristic Dick Francis style, murder is followed by threats which are followed by nasty goings on and a carefully planned and executed escape route. But I don't need to go into any more detail because if you have ever enjoyed a Dick Francis yarn you are going to enjoy this new one equally as much, if not more.

One theme, however, that of father and son, makes one reflect on the father-son joint authorship of Even Money -Felix Francis sharing authorship with his father. Parent-children relationships are a constant thread in Dick Francis' novels, providing great material for plots and perhaps also reflecting the author's more private feelings.

If you have never listened to a reading or dramatisation of a Dick Francis novel then you will be in for a great four hours. He truly is a rewarding writer to have read aloud. And who better to read to you than Martin Jarvis, who brilliantly voices all the nuances of class and regional variation of the numerous characters of the racing world.

Be sure to master the subtleties of betting odds before the off.

* * * *

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Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

2009-08-24T09:35:00.018+01:00

read by Martin Jarvis

George Orwell wrote in his 1945 essay 'In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse' that 'Wodehouse's real sin has been to present the English upper classes as much nicer people than they are. All through his books certain problems are constantly avoided. Almost without exception his moneyed young men are unassuming, good mixers, not avaricious: their tone is set for them by Psmith, who retains his own upper-class exterior but bridges the social gap by addressing everyone as "Comrade".'

Psmith has perhaps been overlooked in favour of Wodehouse's most famous creations Jeeves and Bertram Wooster, whose antics have been so brilliantly potrayed on the small screen but which truly come alive in readings such as CSA Word's excellent Right Ho, Jeeves, with the perfect modulations of Martin Jarvis at the helm.

Whether Orwell is right about how 'nice' Wodehouse's upper classes are portrayed is open to discussion. This listener is beginning to find the misogyny and recklessness of young Bertram rather cruel, and is even wondering whether Wodehouse, far from being under the thrall of the right, as some claim his broadcasts from German-occupied France during the Second World War demonstrate he was, is in fact Marxist by inclination.

Regardless, let it be said that Gussie Fink-Nottle, Madeline Bassett, Tuppy Glossop, Aunt Dahlia and the very first celebrity chef, Anatole, will bring a smile to even the gloomiest listener. This 4-CD set will be played time and time again and will never fail to amuse.

Quite simply, brilliant.

* * * *

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Claudius the God by Robert Graves

2009-07-15T12:17:00.004+01:00

read by Derek Jacobi

Epic drama from the celebrated mythographer Robert Graves, Claudius the God draws on classical sources to recreate the lost autobiography of Claudius, fourth emperor of Rome, whose rule spanned from 41 to 54 AD. A sequel to the equally dramatic and surprisingly human I, Clauduis, Claudius the God covers Cluadius' life as he is reluctantly pronounced emperor of the Roman Empire and then a 'god'.

Placating the army following his nephew Caligula's disastrous actions and overseeing the invasion of Britain provide some of the central episodes to Claudius's life as emperor. His reputedly nymphomaniac wife Messalina becomes one of his many distractions, as does his friendship with King Herod, beset by the most horrible diseases and their symptoms. The writing is timeless and there is much to savour.

This great and ever-popular book can be enjoyed on its own just as much as it can as a sequel to I, Claudius (also available from CSA Word), brought alive by the commanding authority of Derek Jacobi, who one simply accepts as the voice of this great and troubled leader.

A modern classic.

* * * *

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Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

2009-06-16T11:00:00.008+01:00

read by Emilia Fox

The novel, paperback publication of which, arguably, was in part responsible for the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s, is today perhaps more of sociological than literary significance. It is difficult to divorce one's response to the novel without Mervyn Griffith-Jones, QC's astonishing question to the jury in the 1960 Old Bailey prosecution of Penguin Books for obscenity ringing in your ears: 'Is this the kind of book you would wish your wife or servants to read?'.

However, it is essential to bear in mind that Lady Chatterley's Lover was written and first published (in Italy) in 1928 and so should be read with the First World War and the 1926 Miners' Lockout thundering in one's consciousness. The work is outstandingly modern and brave, and Lawrence's intentions serious and important. Not only are social and marital conventions questioned, but raised also - possibly for the first time in English literature - are issues related to childlessness and disability. Class and language are foremost concerns, with Mellors speaking his local dialect as well as introducing Old English-derived 'four-letter' words never uttered in 'polite' society, much less written down.

An assuredly moral and compassionate work, Lady Chatterley's Lover is a masterpiece of literary fiction, bowlderized and debased by what has been published in its wake. So much so, that the novel is victim to parody and mockery, bastardized by pulp 'romantic' and 'chicklit' scribblings.

Emilia Fox's reading is faultless - giving beautiful, serene and confident voice to Lawrence's poetic and idealistic vision of emotional fulfilment.

An audiobook classic.

* * * *

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Farewell to the East End by Jennifer Worth

2009-06-16T09:42:00.027+01:00

read by Anne Reid

This really is the farewell to London's East End and the start of the East London we know today. Anyone growing up or moving to twenty-first century East London would be shocked and horrified by what was accepted as the norm only sixty years before: illiteracy, poverty and sickness; crowded, barely lit and insanitary housing, with child and maternal mortality of present-day third-world proportions.

Jennifer Worth's recollections of her time working as a midwife with the Nonnatus House nuns is an outstanding series for Orion Audiobooks, beautifully read by the splendid Anne Reid - evocative, haunting, gladdening and reassuring. Full of humour and anecdote, these tales of true working-class characters are at the same time entertaining and thought-provoking - the back-street abortionists with their ineffective concoction for 'digestive problems'; the identical twins who share a husband; the enormous ship's woman who provides sexual services for the crew - including the captain, her father, whose baby she is delivered of in the close confines of her ship's cabin. With the ongoing histories of the nuns and of her fellow night sisters, Farewell to the East End is a fitting and moving end to the author's work in the rapidly transforming landscape and amongst the fast-changing lives of those whose domain is this part of the capital.

I hope we will hear of Jennifer Worth's life as a musician and music teacher - the career she took up on leaving midwifery. It is guaranteed to work its charms.

Exceptional.

* * * *

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The Inimitable Jeeves, vol. 1 by P. G. Wodehouse

2009-05-12T13:48:00.008+01:00

read by Martin Jarvis

Martin Jarvis has the superlative ability to individualise Wodehouse's bizarre cast of characters with consummate skill and humour. Three and half hours in the company of Jeeves, Wooster, Bingo Little, Aunt Agatha, et al. - as well as the inimitable Jarvis - is pretty hard to beat. The Inimitable Jeeves will not disappoint.

In spite of the arguably contentious attitude to class and status depicted in these short stories, there is little to offend and much to entertain. Bingo Little's infatuation with Mabel, a waitress in a tea-and-bun shop (significantly some fifty yards east of the Ritz Hotel), and then Bingo's socialisation of his uncle, Mortimer Little, through reading him the novels of Rosie M. Banks, in which 'marriage with young persons of an inferior social status is held up as both feasible and admirable', is just the start to this wonderful, incomparable set of short stories which is guaranteed to be listened to time after time.

Wodehouse brightens up the dullest day and lightens the heaviest heart. So give yourself a tonic by listening to this comedy classic.

* * * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

Buy The Inimitable Jeeves, vol. 1

Black & Blue by Ian Rankin

2009-05-12T13:44:00.003+01:00

read by James Macpherson

Darker and larger in scale, Black & Blue is one of Ian Rankin's greatest and richest novels, featuring Detective Inspector John Rebus, read with all the nuance and drama that James Macpherson can muster.

Rebus has four cases on his plate - hunting down the sadistic 'Johnny Bible,' a copy-cat serial killer of the real killer dubbed 'Bible John', who raped and murdered women he met at the Barrowlands Dancehall in the 1960s, and who was never caught. Rebus is also under pressure from an internal inquiry led by a man he has accused of taking bribes from Glasgow's 'Mr Big'. Even worse, TV journalists are poking about into Rebus's past over an alleged miscarriage of justice.

With his personal life in a mess, Rebus travels the length and breadth of Scotland - Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Shetland and the North Sea - risking his own safety with an investigation into a suspicious death of an oil-rig worker and contacting the ruthless underworld career criminal Big Ger Cafferty, a vicious character Rebus has locked horns with several times in the past. With leads relating to the supply of drugs from mainland Scotland to the oil-rigs, and the accusation of police corruption in an old murder case which implicates Rebus and his former mentor Lawson Geddes, Black & Blue is complex, unsettling and very very good. Truly a contemporary crime classic.

* * * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

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Agatha Raisin: The Curious Curate and The Buried Treasure by M. C. Beaton

2009-05-12T13:39:00.003+01:00

full cast recording, with Penelope Keith

Perhaps reversing the trend for aristocratic and patrician detectives, M. C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin's background is decidedly plebian: Agatha was born in a tower block 'slum' in Birmingham to unemployed and dipsomaniac, shoplifting parents, living on benefits.

Raisin drinks and smokes, but her self-determination forged her a lucrative career in PR and, having retreated to 'a quiet Cotswold village', falls into detecting by happy accident. This feisty, glorious character is superbly brought to life through the incomparable voice of Penelope Keith, supported by a host of excellent BBC drama regulars. In this boxed set of two one-hour dramas, Raisin is up against murder and mayhem - as well as duck racing, morris dancing, treasure hunts and secret libraries - but, as ever, more than anything, seeking romance.

Life-affirming and entertaining, if you haven't tried Agatha Raisin, this is thoroughly recommended.

* * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

Buy The Curious Curate and The Buried Treasure

Paul Temple and the Front Page Men by Francis Durbridge

2009-05-12T13:35:00.005+01:00

read by Anthony Head

Familiar to listeners to BBC radio from the excellent dramatisations prefaced by Vivian Ellis's vivid and memorable theme 'Coronation Scot', Paul Temple needs little introduction. Francis Durbridge's detective was developed for the wireless and broadcasts started in the late 1930s, continuing right up to the 1960 and then revived in the early twenty-first century.

The decidedly patrician crime novelist cum amateur detective and his impossibly supportive and attractive wife Steve is for ever being called on by Scotland Yard to help solve damnably puzzling crimes. And, of course, he always triumphs where the police simply can't make any headway. Although there are always elements of class conflict in the stories, Durbridge is only carrying on in the traditions of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey and even Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (who mentions that his ancestors were 'country squires').

Anthony Head is the perfect reader of the Temple stories and they make a thoroughly entertaining listen. With more than a little self-satire, 'The Front Page Men' is the title of a detective novel from an pseudonynmous author Andra Fortune. Thefts and kidnappings, then murders, are marked by a card left at the scene of the crime inscribed with the words 'The Front Page Men'. When Steve disappears, Temple knows he is up against a dastardly and dangerous opponent.

Great fun.

* * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

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Wise Children by Angela Carter

2009-05-11T23:33:00.008+01:00

read by Eileen Atkins

Angela Carter's last novel, Wise Children is a wickedly camp delight and a veritable masterpiece. The 'wise children' of the title (two of them, at least) are twin chorus girls, Dora and Nora Chance, and the story is an account of the mockingly bizarre theatrical dynasty of which they are a part. At the age of 75, they recount their own and their progenitors' weird and wonderous lives.

The novel is full of surreal and real individuals, and centres on fatherhood and paternal neglect, and the consequences thereof. Dora and Nora's 'illegitimate' lechery is both a delight and a horror and there is an underlying sadness in the midst of the satire. Based, one might speculate, on several grandees of the English stage and their extensive progeny- on both sides of the blanket - the novel combines Shakespeare with vaudeville, the circus and carnival, with telling asides at television and celebrity.

The centrepiece of the drama is the 100th birthday party of Sir Melchior Hazard - the greatest Shakespearian actor of his generation - a birthday he shares with the Bard himself but also with his twin brother Peregrine Hazard and Dora and Nora - the daughters Sir Melchior has never acknowledged. Twins abound, as do the themes of song and dance - and incest. There is never a dull moment, especially in the hands of the incomparable Eileen Atkins, who expertly brings all the marvellous characters, twists and turns to gaudy life. Quite simply, a modern classic.

What a joy it is to dance and sing.

* * * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

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The Essential Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

2009-05-11T19:24:00.006+01:00

read by David Timson, Tim Pigott-Smith, Crawford Logan, Rupert Degas, et al.

This a treasure trove and Naxos have to be congratulated for assembling such a rewarding choice of material and such a wonderful cast of actors to illustrate Conan Doyle's life and works - which, as the listener will discover, extends far beyond Holmes, Watson and Baker Street.

Conan Doyle's amost picaresque early life indicates just how random can be the course of a person's life. Always a raconteur and storyteller, Conan Doyle's might have been knighted as a Harley Street eye specialist and not as the multimillionaire writer he became, had his particular choice of medical specialism ever found a paying clientele. We are so fortunate it did not.

David Timson expertly reads The Adventure of the Speckled Band, apparently one of Conan Doyle's own favourite Sherlock Holmes stories - and surely as intriguing, inventive, and satisfying today as it was the day it was first published, and Carl Rigg builds great tension into the equally enthralling short stories Lot No. 249, about an Egyptian mummy, and The Sealed Room, about, well, a sealed room, containing a dark and tragic secret. Rupert Degas and Glen McCready bring us Brigadier Gerard and Professor Challenger from his neglected adventure and historical novels.

More fascinating still are Conan Doyle's spiritual and psychic interests, including the affair of the Cottingley Fairies - something worth investigating on the Internet, if you have never seen these remarkable photographs.

With a number of recordings of Conan Doyle's own voice, The Essential Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a truly wonderful package and comes highly recomended for all lovers of the literary, historical, and the bizarre.

* * * * *

Buy The Essential Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

2009-05-11T15:00:00.006+01:00

read by Jeremy Northam

Based (it is claimed) on Graham Greene's experiences as a spy working for MI6, this satirical romance is a gem - and this CSA Word recording, brilliantly narrated by the excellent Jeremy Northam, is all the better for being 'complete and unabridged'.

Opening with a blast of Cuban jazz, Northam has the wonderfully entertaining skill of characterizing the protagonists with just the right accent, tone, and delivery - from the vague Hawthorne to the venal Captain Segura, the petulant Milly to the tortured Hasselbacher. The story has its own momentum, leading the unworldly James Wormold headlong into an unstoppable maelstrom with international consequences - with uncanny prescience of the Cuban missile crisis.

If you haven't read the book (or seen Carol Reed's feature film) Our Man in Havana is going to delight and entertain. A wonderful seven hours.

* * * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

Buy Our Man in Havana

My Secret Diary by Jacqueline Wilson

2009-05-11T14:20:00.004+01:00

read by Jacqueline Wilson

Adored and fêted by many a teenaged girl, this is Jacqueline Wilson’s account of her own schooldays and adolescence, growing up in Kingston upon Thames, south-west of London, in the 1960s.

What her young fans will make of it is difficult to imagine (and she does seem to have them in mind as she charts her own growing pains, ambitions and discoveries), but for older readers and listeners, this account of strict single-sex schools, austere homes and holidays, and unemancipated lifestyles will strike some painful memories.

Thoroughly entertaining, Jacqueline Wilson’s ambitions to write are clear right from the start - and we are never allowed to forget them. Her thirst for literature is thoroughly documented and displayed, although it is a shame that she rightly relates her admiration for Nabokov whilst at the same time telling her young readers to steer well clear of anything so corrupt as Lolita: as if she is afraid that championing such a masterpiece might get her into trouble, and that although she was mature enough to understand the novel’s subtle message, today’s youth would only confuse irony with pornography.

A great listen, and an honest insight into the mind of our greatest living children’s author.

* * * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

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Say Goodbye by Lisa Gardner

2009-05-11T14:14:00.003+01:00

read by Ann Marie Lee and Lincoln Hoppe

Not for the fainthearted, Lisa Gardner has written a compelling and profoundly disturbing serial killer fiction, which is as unpleasant and entertaining as they come. Superbly characterized and horribly convincing, this is not the sort of novel you will want to put down or will be able easily to forget, dealing as it does with psychopathic cruelty and base abuse of children - and the consequences thereof.

Stunningly narrated by Ann Marie Lee and Lincoln Hoppe, Say Goodbye demonstrates Gardner’s deft talent for dialogue and her gifted expertise in creating and sustaining tension and narrative momentum. With so many similar tales unfolding nightly in multitudinous investigative television series - most of the best from the US - this novel shows how the written (and spoken) word can convey so much force and power.

Not an easy listen - but a rewarding one - and one that will stay with you for a long time.

Highly recommended.

* * * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, vol. 2, by Arthur Conan Doyle

2009-02-04T10:37:00.004Z

read by Edward Hardwicke

Magazines, books, films, television and radio have for more than 100 years brought us faces, voices, locations and atmosphere that many instinctively associate with Conan Doyle's famous detective - from Paget's somewhat posed portraits in the Strand Magazine to Jeremy Brett's brilliant, increasingly distrait 1984-94 Granada television series. Guinness World Records cites Holmes as the 'most-portrayed' character in film and television, with over seventy actors playing the part in some 200 productions in all parts of the globe.

But, the absolute joy of this CSA audiobook is that we hear Conan Doyle's own words - unabridged -and can treasure the conversations between Holmes and Watson, the wonderful dialogue, descriptions, plottings, and the complete 'world' produced by this master craftsman. Doyle may very well have tired of Holmes and desired to be associated with other things, but that does nothing to undermine the sheer brilliance of his story-telling - and it is the story-telling that displaces utterly all the dramatisations and adaptations which have plundered the tales themselves.

Edward Hardwicke's readings are unmatched in their brilliance. He really is a consummate narrator - and perhaps the definitive Watson (the supposed chronicler, of course, of Holmes' exploits). This is more than a delight. This is an absolute revelation to those of us who have not read the original stories. I cannot think of anyone better than Edward Hardwicke to read the stories - unabridged - in their entirety. For this listener, Holmes is more alive than ever - and more appreciated. I sincerely hope the rest of the canon may be given the Hardwicke treatment. He has the gravitas, a niggling cynicism but the refined acclamation which are Watsons' hallmarks - and the readings are endlessly entertaining.

Perfection.
* * * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

Buy The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, volume 2

Dewey by Vicki Myron

2009-01-26T14:42:00.013Z

read by Suzanne Toren

The face on the cover says it all, really - the knowing, serious intelligence emanating from the orangey red cat photographed against a backdrop of books.

Dewey - cat and book (and soon to be motion picture) has captured the imagination of the world and put Spencer, Iowa firmly on that world’s map - the story and the character drawing visitors, well-wishers, journalists, film-makers and cat lovers from all over the globe. Google ‘Dewey’ and you will see exactly the phenomenon of this wonderful creature.

Of course, Dewey isn’t the true subject of this audiobook - it is the author and librarian Vicki Myron and how a cat transforms her life, the lives of her daughter, her colleagues and all the naysayers and spoilsports of Spencer, Iowa. Absorbing, heart-warming, moving, life-affirming - and not only for animal lovers or even book lovers - Dewey is social history, recording in microcosm the changing economic, public, community, recreational and even architectural tastes of small-town USA.

Mesmerizingly read by Suzanne Toren, Dewey is a delight for all ages and highly suitable for shortening even the longest of journeys. Dewey will stay in your imagination for life.

* * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

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Uncle Fred in the Springtime by P. G. Wodehouse

2009-01-22T12:45:00.007Z

read by Martin Jarvis

You have to reach for Roget to do justice to Wodehouse. 'Joyful' or 'joyous' simply won't do. Try: ‘amusement’, ‘animation’, ‘bliss’, ‘charm’, ‘cheer’, ‘comfort’, ‘delectation’, ‘delight’, ‘diversion’, ‘ecstasy’, ‘elation’, ‘exultation’, ‘exulting’, ‘felicity’, ‘festivity’, ‘frolic’, ‘fruition’, ‘gaiety’, ‘gem’, ‘gladness’, ‘glee’, ‘good humour’, ‘gratification’, ‘hilarity’, ‘humor’, ‘indulgence’, ‘jewel’, ‘jubilance’, ‘liveliness’, ‘luxury’, ‘merriment’, ‘mirth’, ‘pride’, ‘rapture’, ‘ravishment’, ‘refreshment’, ‘regalement’, ‘rejoicing’, ‘revelry’, ‘satisfaction’, ‘solace’, ‘sport’, ‘transport’, ‘treasure’, ‘treat’, ‘wonder’. They are all here in spades.

Wodehouse seems to have that rather patrician knack of finding the most trivial thing of inestimable interest and of spinning out a jaunt into the country for more than a chapter or two. There is no denying - Lord Emsworth's precious pigs have kept the somewhat batty amongst us amused for years. And Martin Jarvis has it all down to a T (if that is the right tea, tee or T in question).

Here is yet another occasion for mistaken identities, misplaced romance, misapprehended intentions - all the usual Wodehousian opportunities for laughter and tears, disappointment and success, smiles and gloom - ending, as ever, in prelapsarian joy and humour.

Wodehouse has his critics, and admittedly some of his books are better than the rest, but Uncle Fred will keep you amused even as your neighbours' son's cricket ball lands unceremoniously in the potting shed and your aunt destroys all the plumbing after washing her smalls in the sink in the guest's bathroom.

Hard to beat.
* * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

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A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

2009-01-22T12:17:00.006Z

read by Meera Syal

Forster seems to stay in fashion despite his arguably outdated preoccupations with class, manners, sexuality, mysticism and, in the case of A Passage to India, colonialism and independence.

There is a misogyny in A Passage to India which is transmuted into depressed (not exactly repressed) homosexuality in his other books and even deliberately suffused in Howards Ends - perhaps his greatest work. But A Passage to India is so much more than the excellent film with Nigel Havers and Art Malik and it is the prose which makes this such a fine piece - not simply the characters and the story - which are arguably rather trivial, despite the seriousness of the situation and of its consequences.

The Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis described A Passage to India as 'a classic of the liberal spirit', and his preoccupations in this important and quintessentially English novel are liberal - socially and politically. However, what brings this novel alive, stimulates one's enthusiasm and makes one reach for the next disk, is not so much the unravelling plot and the predictions of what will befall the former colony, so much as the outstanding reading by Meera Syal, who brings such depth, understanding, delicacy and plausibility as to make the whole novel enthralling, fresh and alive - an outstanding performance which has done so much to bring me, for one, back to Forster. I hope she will find the time to give many more novels her sensitivity, dramatic intelligence and wondrous talent for characterisation.

A brilliant success.

* * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

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The Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope

2009-01-19T10:04:00.003Z

Full BBC Cast Recording

The BBC - both radio and television - has performed an inestimable service for Trollope by adapting a selection of his novels for broadcast. His seemingly innumerable books are now - more or less - back in print, and his reputation is enjoying a much-deserved favourable reassessment. Trollope was exceedingly prolific, and some say he tended towards the repetitious. But, if you ever find the time and inclination to immerse yourself in Trollope's oeuvre, you will be much rewarded, educated and entertained.

Trollope's literary talents tended towards characterisation and social setting, and his familiarity with ecclesiastical life pushed him to describes that quintessentially English institution, the Church of England. None the less, he knew how to portray women and their foibles, and those considered representative of the fairer sex are central if not predominant to his literary corpus.

This fully dramatised BBC radio collection is peerless and precious. Who other than BBC radio drama would assemble such a distinguished and talented ensemble to enact a literary gem such as this. Even the American theatre of the air humbles into shallow insignificance against the unparalleled and incomparable brilliance and talent of the BBC's radio drama company.

Barchester Chronicles is worth the licence fee on its own. At once and the same time serious, moving, thought-provoking, heart-warming, amusing, laugh-inducing, smile-promoting, ironic (if not parodying) and anticipating slapstick. Pure entertainment which will repay listening time after time.

This is radio at its very best: sheer joy from start to finish. And long may it continue.

* * * * *
© 2009 AudioBooksReview

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As You Do by Richard Hammond

2008-12-18T20:17:00.008Z

read by Richard Hammond
After establishing his lads' mag credentials with a bit of rudery and crudity (which may put off the more sensitive listener), 'the hamster' from BBC television's Top Gear demonstrates that he really can produce some wonderfully entertaining and absorbing accounts of his rather reckless life (typified, it goes without saying, by his much-publicised near-death accident of, was it only, last year).

Supposedly much fancied by his female (and equally much envied by his male) fans, Richard Hammond lives a rather charmed existence, heavily subsidised by the BBC licence payer, which allows him to visit exotic locations, throw himself into (carefully managed) dangerous situations and locales, and carry on the sort of carefree life his wage-slave followers can only dream about.

The tales recounted in this audiobook are made many many times more interesting by being narrated by the author, who has an exceptionally infectious delivery that is charming yet vulnerable. You suffer all the indignities and fears he recounts with sympathy, understanding and admiration. And, yes, you end up wishing that he could be a mate of yours in your local.

This is an audiobook delight, and I can't wait for the next instalment. Hammond is a natural storyteller, a natural broadcaster, a national treasure. And long may he entertain.

* * * *
© 2008 AudioBooksReview

Buy As You Do

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

2008-12-18T20:11:00.007Z

read by Stephen King
Stephen King's phenomenal book sales and Hollywood deals might put off the more literary-inclined reader. But this collection of short stories should do more than enough to persuade of the sheer brilliance of this writer. Poe is clearly a respected antecedent, but Shelley, Stoker and Wyndham are King's true inspirations. And Huxley, too. What we have here are brilliantly entertaining and disturbingly memorable characters, situations, developments, milieux. Who could ever forget a cat which escapes on a car journey, the distant vision of an explosion in New York, figures in a lonely field, the body of a girl in the trunk of a Mercedes?

King's skills are many, and only the completely narcissitic critic will try to accuse him of being derivative or unoriginal. What he does is to imagine the worst possible situations in the most ordinary ways. His characterisations and descriptions are simply phenomenal.

As a reader or listener you are just swept up by the detail or nuance. And everything you hear draws you deeper into the narrative. 9/11 is a recurring presence in these stories, as is the apparently casual violence of the contemporary American way of life. But the strongest attraction of the collection is King's depiction of the sheer ordinariness of life and how the smallest thing can tilt the universe, thrusting one into the path of forces barely suspected to exist.

One for fans, without question. But also one for all those who have never before read this true genius of American culture. You will certainly be rewarded (... in heaven or in hell).

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© 2008 AudioBooksReview

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A Double Dose of Horrid Henry by Francesca Simon

2008-12-18T20:00:00.010Z

read by Miranda Richardson

Seasonal warnings for anyone with a pre-teenage boy or girl: A Double Dose of Horrid Henry is a strong splurge of characteristic 'Horrid' situations and consequences.

Christmas at the Horrids is an excruciating and disturbing affair, and undeniably more acceptable fare for an eight-year-old than for his or her parents (or guardians, etc.). Your hardy reviewer found CD 1 almost a little too much to take!

Suffice it to say, nonetheless, that this is without doubt classic Horrid - produced with all the talented brilliance that the audiobook people can muster - from the abridgment and narration to the musical arrangements and sound effects (especially the sound effects).

If you can't persuade your children to settle down with a book. Or they tell you they are too old to be read to. Set the CD or DVD player to Horrid Henry's Yuletide exploits and you might have a few hours of peace and ... quiet.

A Double Dose of Horrid Henry is right back on form.

In a word (not a Horridesque kind of word) - inimitable.

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© 2008 AudioBooksReview

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Crooked House by Agatha Christie

2008-11-16T17:51:00.022Z

Full-cast BBC dramatisation

A darker, maturer, sophisticated novel, Crooked House entitles Agatha Christie rightly, I believe, to the much over-used title 'Queen of Crime'. Originally published in 1949, this book was reported to be one of Christie's own favourites of her predigious output.

The morally corrupt Leonides family, headed by wealthy entrepreneur Aristide Leonides, is sent into turmoil at his death at the age of 85. He has been murdered, of course. And has recently changed his will. The prospective heirs - all suspects - rattle around in the eponymous crooked house.

With Brenda Leonides, Aristide's much younger second wife allegedly having an affair with Laurence Brown, the conscientious objector /private tutor to her children Eustace and Josephine; Aristide's unmarried sister-in-law, the repressed and embittered Edith de Haviland; failed businessman Roger, the eldest son from Aristide's first marriage, and his austere scientist wife Clemency; not to mention Roger's younger brother Philip, and his 'modestly successful' actress wife Magda, there are plenty of possible suspects. Sixteen-year-old Eustace and his unprepossesing detective-story-obsessed twelve-year-old sister Josephine are at the Jamesian Innocents vortex.

The children's nanny dies after drinking a digitalis-laced cup of cocoa that had apparently been intended for Josephine. Then, Edith invites Josephine to come out with her in her car for an ice cream soda, only to drive off a cliff.

The stuff, perhaps, of comedy. But not in Christie's hands. With an excellent cast including Rory Kinnear and Anna Maxwell Martin, this is radio drama at its very best and demonstrates just why Agatha Christie is still packing them in in London's West End, still getting viewers in the millions for television dramatisations, still selling palette loads of paperbacks and still prompting radio producers to commission adaptations.

Peerless.

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© 2008 AudioBooksReview

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Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

2008-11-16T17:47:00.011Z

read by Nathaniel Parker, Emilia Fox and Tobias Menzies

Written by Evelyn Waugh at a time when he desperately needed money and when his marriage had collapsed, Vile Bodies is sometimes considered too spontaneous and episodic and so lacking narrative continuity. But this is where its genius lies. You genuinely have the feeling that 'all that succession and repetition of massed humanity. All those vile bodies' repulsed and attracted simultaneously , that all that indulgence was for real, but that there could be no other way of telling of such goings on.

Satire is a loaded die, and Waugh seems to go in and out of fashion. However, there is so much to enjoy and to understand in this biting condemnation of a society that has gone out of control and is about to face an even greater fall from grace. An end of an era portrait of decadence and moral decay but narrated with constantly amusing inventiveness, Vile Bodies is one of Waugh's masterpieces.

This CSA Word adaptation could not be bettered. Waugh's quickfire repartee and soulful pathos are brilliantly recreated by this group of talented performers. If you have only ever tried Waugh's Brideshead, you are in for a shock and a delight. If you once read Vile Bodies, you will savour and relish anew the wonderful prose which can move you to tears of humour and loathing.

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© 2008 AudioBooksReview

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