Recent audio books

Spectator, The, May 22, 1999 by Moore, Charlotte

Recent audio books

Charlotte Moore

Listening to books on tape is easier than reading them, but it's a lot more irritating. I am an audio novice, and I found it hard to come to terms with my loss of control over the pace. Reading, one develops a sense for where to linger and where to hurry; listening, one is under the sway of the measured tones of the actor, whose job is to make sure that justice is done to every word. The trouble is, not every word of every book deserves fair treatment. The actor's voice itself is, of course, as rich a source of annoyance as of pleasure. Mispronunciations and misplaced emphases, Blue-Peter-presenter-style, slip in to the most careful of renderings. Then there's the question of accents. Most actors seem to feel that they should earmark each new character with a startling accent of some kind. I wish they didn't.

Michael Palin reads Full Circle (BBC, 10 cassettes, 12.99) himself, which was probably why I enjoyed it most of the six audio books I was sent for review. Lovely, twinkly Michael Palin, the media personality one would most like to be married to not least because he seems to be out of the country for two-thirds of the time describes his journey round the Pacific Rim in the form of a diary. Finding humour but never poking fun, undemanding but never unintelligent, self-deprecating without false modesty, Palin reminds those of us who are kitchenbound that the world is an endlessly explorable place, and that human beings are the most interesting things in it.

Simon Shepherd, of Peak Practice fame, makes a pretty good fist of William Boyd's Armadillo, best-selling. story of a loss adjuster at a loss (Chivers Audio Books, 10 cassettes, 16.95). Shepherd's voice is flexible enough to cope with Boyd's gallery of grotesques, though he makes the women characters sound sillier than they're meant to be. Everyone else thinks that Armadillo is marvellous, and I can't quite account for the feeling of dissatisfaction it gave me. I was going to say that the story was unresolved, with too many loose ends left trailing, but then I realised that what had actually been left trailing was the final cassette which had been eviscerated by my young son. So I got hold of the book and yes, it's perfectly neatly resolved, but I just didn't find it as funny or disturbing or incisive a portrait of contemporary London as I was meant to. Sorry.

Nick Hornby's About a Boy (Chivers Audio Books, 6 cassettes, 14.95 ) is another urban fable, though much less ambitious than Armadillo. It's an amiable morality tale in which, in time-honoured fashion, a child teaches an adult what life's all about, and Hornby's accurate use of detail and sympathy for North London no-hopers make it enjoyable enough. Julian RhindTutt, who reads it, has a flattened voice with a lazily ironic edge which is perfect for the main character, but alas, he can't do women. His rendition of Rachel, the American who provides the love interest, is dreadful. Luckily she doesn't feature much. About a Boy has fewer layers and less sophistication than Armadillo, but it's got more heart.

Angela Huth's Wives of the Fishermen (the title tells you all you need to know) is the kind of novel one could read at a gallop in two or three hours and emerge with the impression of having quite enjoyed oneself (Sterling Audio Books, 16 .95). Listening to it spread out over ten cassettes, however, showed up every banality, every predictability. It reminded me of watching a very, very long line of washing. There is a bit of a climax at the end, but my goodness it's a long time coming. I did wonder whether Phyllida Law was obliged to read it quite so slowly. The (in)action takes place on the east coast of Scotland where, it would seem, women are still women and men are men, but Miss Law's Scots accent only managed to make the femme fatale sound screechy, not sexy.

I was looking forward to John Grisham's The Testament (Random House, 4 cassettes, 12.99). I had never read a John Grisham, and had thought that three million flies couldn't be wrong. Actually, they could. Listening to this story is like hearing about what happens in a Hollywood film without the benefit of pictures, and as anyone knows who has feigned interest in a teenage boy's blow-by-blow account of his favourite movie, it is dull, dull, dull. Henry Leyva, the actor who narrates, is perfectly competent. He even has quite a pleasant voice, but he cannot compensate for the complete absence of intellectual, moral, emotional or aesthetic interest. I preferred Donna Leon's Fatal Remedies (Random House, 2 cassettes, 8.99). Like The Testament this is entirely plot-driven, a workmanlike entertainment set in Venice involving murder, corruption, the police, the mafia, sex tourism, etc. John Nettles's voice gives it a gravitas that it doesn't merit, but it seemed both more honest and more credible than The Testament. Both thrillers were abridged; Fatal Remedies was much shorter. That was considerably in its favour.

The Audio Book Collection freephone number is 0800 136 919 and address: The Audio Book Collection, Freepost (BA 1686/1) Bath, BA2 3 AX.