The Long Song
By Andrea Levy
Read by Andrea Levy with Adrian Lester
Hachette Audio, 10 CDs, unabridged, 11 hours, £19.99
"YOU DO not know me yet," begins the narrator of Andrea Levy's Booker-shortlisted The Long Song. But what a joy it is to make the acquaintance of this elderly, opinionated, stubborn, mischievous Jamaican woman. Born into slavery on a sugar plantation, snatched on a whim to act as lady's maid to the "missus" of the house, the character known as Miss July is writing her life story at the request of her son Thomas. July, mind you, has different ideas from her son about what should be included in such a book – and the ongoing tussle between them provides the endeavour with a wonderful comic foundation to balance the myriad horrors in the telling of the tale. Anyone who loved Levy's last novel, Small Island, will find her trademark warmth and humanity on display here, but The Long Songis far, far more ambitious, and Levy's vivid, often over-the-top reading makes it hugely satisfying.
The Wrong Kind of Blood: An Irish Novel of Betrayal
By Declan Hughes
Read by Stanley Townsend
Isis Audiobooks, 8 CDs, 9hours, £26.99
Published at the height of Dublin’s boom time, the first book in Hughes’s Ed Loy series of crime novels stands up well to the cold eye of hindsight, probably because Hughes never bought into the boom anyway. Nor did his private investigator, who, in the course of this story of family secrets and planning scandals, gets so many beatings he ends up more scrambled than hard-boiled. The real treat in this format is the dark-chocolate voice of Stanley Townsend, who produces character after character – femme fatale, hopeless junkie, cop’s wife, yacht-club blazer, psychotic criminal; you name it, he does it brilliantly – from his bag of theatrical tricks. When you get to the end your first impulse is to look around for more; happily, the next three novels in the series, also read by Townsend, are also available from Isis.
Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days
By Derek Landy
Read by Rupert Degas
Harper, 7 CDs, 8 hours, £14.99
The fourth adventure from skeleton detective Skulduggery Pleasant and his teenage sidekick, Valkyrie Cain, finds the magical pair facing down assorted ghouls, baddies, demons and a hilariously inept zombie army. Landy's dry humour – one of the bad guys here, complete with Texas drawl, rejoices in the name of Billy Ray Sanguine – makes this series more than just an Irish Harry Potter, but there's no denying the Irish settings give it all an added frisson; the Phil Lynott statue has a walk-on role in Dark Days, and Croke Park is the scene of the final showdown. Rupert Degas throws himself into the fun with great energy and an impressively convincing collection of Irish accents – until the final CD, when he pronounces "Howth" to rhyme with "mouth". Gotcha, Rupert.
The Hand That First Held Mine
By Maggie O’Farrell
Read by Samantha Bond
Hachette Digital, 4 CDs, 5hours, £15.99
In 1950s Soho a young graduate who has fled the safety of her suburban home discovers the delights of abstract art and pink gin. In present-day London a Finnish artist is recovering from the birth of her first child and a badly managed Caesarean section. Between the headphones the listener knows the two stories must be connected but can't, for the life of her, figure out how. Maggie O'Farrell's fifth novel might as well be entitled Families – And How to Survive Them. It's about the secrets, shadows and downright lies that often masquerade as memories; it's about the differences (and similarities) between generations; it's engaging and intelligent; and it made me cry at the end, though, looking back, I can't, for the life of me, think why. It also made me wonder why, given that O'Farrell was born in Ireland, she isn't known as an Irish novelist. Let's claim her, and fast.
The Mist
By Stephen King
Hodder Stoughton, 1 CD, 90 minutes, £14.99
“You should be hearing me in your right ear,” a solemn disembodied voice intones at the start of this “three-D audio adaptation”. It’s the scariest part of what turns out to be a shameless exercise in commercial exploitation: unbelievably wooden acting and a mind-numbingly tedious script. Which, by the way, is not King’s wonderfully creepy short story but a minced-up version, chopped into bite-sized pieces and stuffed with irritating product-placement opportunities. As for that much-vaunted “three-D sound”, it’s just the kind of cheap movie carry-on where you can’t hear the dialogue, so you ratchet up the volume and then – BAM! Random explosions and shotgun noises blow your ears off. If this is the future of audio I’ll immerse myself in blissful silence, thanks very much.
