Recent audio books Chivers of Bath have been turning out some remarkable tapes of the novels of Evelyn Waugh, read by Michael Maloney, who is to me a newly discovered gem. In his earlier effort a year ago, Pint Out More Flags (6 cassettes, 14.95) he read elegantly and well, but he comes into his own in the new Black Mischief (6 cassettes, 14.95) where he can impersonate a number of characters, all of them politically incorrect. This is a romp from beginning to end, and scarcely more substantial as a novel than an extended joke or short story. Boy meets girl and says, `Youre so beautiful I would like to eat you. Later in the story he does eat her at a cannibal feast where he knows her only by her pretty pink beret. It is the story of a rise and fall, in this case of an ex-Oxford, but black, native emperor. He rules a mythical island and is lucky to be taken up by Basil Seal, who, in disgrace from London, backs modernity which Waugh already hates in the early Thirties, and is finally outed. This is not the almost-real country of Scoop of which Lord Deedes and Wilfred Thesiger, who, in my view, would have made a better lord, are the last survivors of what actually happened. The country of Black Mischief is closer to that of some hilarious schoolboys magazine and even the attacks on modern life, in which General Connolly has a heavenly mistress called Black Bitch, and the Emperors procession to celebrate contraceptives has the opposite to the intended effect since the native population think they are a juju to promote fertility, are spirited and jollier than anything after Put Out More Flags. Michael Maloney is particularly good as an Armenian trader slipping in and out of offices in stockinged feet and his Connolly is admirable, particularly in the crisis where he foils an attempt to make the royal guards wear boots by encouraging them to eat them. This, incidentally, is a possible reason why Cyril Connolly himself was always called Boot by the inner circle of Waughs friends. This early novel makes wonderful reading on the tape and since one would never have thought of imitating all those funny voices for oneself it adds liveliness to literature. I would never have thought of going back to read it, and yet it was an oasis of refreshment. It is hard to know how it must have looked years ago as Mr Thesiger and the Duke of Gloucester se out for Abyssinia, and I fear seriousness ha overtaken the world since then, but it remain as a monument of how extremely funny al foreigners seemed to be in the early Thirties.
Highbridge Audio Books 201 Sixth Street SE, Suite 220, Minneapolis, MN 55414 Garrison Keillors WOBEGON BOY (1598870505, $26.95) comes from the host and announcer of the radio hit PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, now heard on public radio stations across the country, and follows a young man who lands in upstate New York to manage a public radio station at a college, achieving much success but still feeling his life is empty. His search for such meaning will lead him not back to Lake Wobegon but to the big New York City, where hell find roots he never imagined possible. WLT: A RADIO ROMANCE (1598870750, $26.95) also receives Keillors warm and familiar voice as it tells of brothers who found a radio station to rescue their failing business–and become the Sandwich King of south Minneapolis. Fiction and fact blend in a satisfying story of radio life and its special meaning for both audience and creators. Paula Poundstones THERES NOTHING IN THIS BOOK THAT I MEANT TO SAY (1598870718, $29.95) comes from a renowned humorist and provides a blend of memoir and comedy as it discusses biographies of legendary historical figures woven with her own tale. A funny, absorbing comedy is created. All are top picks promising repeated lending interest from any public library holding strong in audio lending.
In Triangulation (read by Sean Barrett, Isis Audio Books, 6 cassettes, 10 hours unabridged), Phil Whittaker uses maps rather as Magnus Mills uses fences. Three young employees at the Directorate of Overseas Surveys work on `triangulating Tanganyika. Plodding, stay-at-home John does it all from his desk; unreliable, sexy Laurence goes out there and lives it. In theory both men love Helen, who is struggling to escape from her oppressive father and from the frustrations of being an intelligent young woman in 1959, but this lovediagram falsifies the true map of their emotions. Really, John loves (and hates) Laurence, Helen loves (and hates) Laurence, Laurence loves (and hates) himself. Triangulation shares much with Ishiguros The Remains of the Day in its concern with a particularly English kind of repression and false interpretation, and in its sense of the poignancy of paths not taken, but John, the main character, is such a competent study in dreariness tinged with malice that I soon didnt want to hear any more about him. This is an intelligent book, but whereas The Restraint of Beasts is gloriously contrived to the point where the contrivance is what its all about, Triangulation is contrived in a way that weakens the emotional clout it is undoubtedly meant to have. Sean Barrett delivers the male voices successfully, but he makes poor Helen sound silly. I was looking forward to With Your Crooked Heart by Helen Dunmore (read by Janet Maw, Isis Audio Books, 6 cassettes, 8 hours 40 mins, unabridged). I love the fleshiness of Dunmores prose, her similes that are at once sumptuous and exact. I was surprised to find how poorly her qualities translate to audio. This was partly due to the choice of reader. Janet Maws voice is delicate, ladylike, almost prissy, which would be fine in a different context, but to me felt like Sir Cliff starring in Wuthering Heights. There is another problem; books on tape need to be driven by action, perhaps because of the slowness of listening. With Helen Dunmore, `what happens next is not a strong motivator, because the important things have already happened or will never happen, or happen inside the head or the heart or the loins of one of the very small number of characters. Drums of Morning (read by Martyn Read, Isis Audio Books Reminiscence Series, 8 cassettes, 9 hours 10 mins, unabridged),Vernon Scannells account of his first 18 years, is a great success on tape. Autobiographies, by definition, have a single narrative voice, which makes for smooth listening. Scannell is a poet, but his prose is muscular and unfanciful. He describes the emotional, intellectual, aesthetic and (to a lesser extent) financial destitution of his family life with a straightforwardness that makes its honors all the more imaginable. Scannells father, a small-town photographer between the wars, was a sadist, his mother a frigid miser. Yet the life-force was so strong in Scannell and his brother that with the help of music, books and girls they manage to break out into the light. Drums of Morning puts the bad old days emphatically in their place, and Martyrs Reads narration suits it well.
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