The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes – Volume II

Review by Sue Arnold, The Guardian

Seven more truly ingenious criminal cases, only some of whose arch villains are the intellectual match of the legendary violin-playing, opium-smoking Baker Street sleuth, as he modestly observes to his long-suffering sidekick Dr Watson. Here’s one Baron Adelbert Gruner, “cool as ice, silky voiced, poisonous as a cobra with a superficial suggestion of afternoon tea, and all the cruelty of the grave behind it”. If Holmes’s insufferable conceitedness didn’t get under your skin (and David Timson portrays him brilliantly), you probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much.

The Woman in White

Review by Sue Arnold, The Guardian

Wait six months and you’ll have the unabridged version lasting a full 22 hours. For once I’m more than happy with this judicious abridgement of Collins’s 1860 bestseller, which spawned a plethora of Disney-style merchandise – white shawls, fans, china ornaments etc. – but frankly does go on a bit. It was the first of the Victorian ‘sensation’ novels, a gothic thriller with a cast of OTT characters: aristocratic villains, cruel husbands, a dastardly Italian count, a handsome hero of low birth but high ideals, a heroine with, wait for it, a moustache, and of course the mysterious woman in white on the loose from a lunatic asylum, who – no, I shan’t give anything away. The epistolary style – it has ten narrators – is custom-built for audio.

The Scarlet Letter

Review by S.M.M., Audiofile Magazine

Katinka Wolf’s voice resonates as if she were reading in a house owned by one of the story’s historic characters, with the slightly cavernous echo lending an earthy and homespun feel to the text. The story of how rote religion and religiosity can betray true faith is penned expertly by Hawthorne. It appears less an attack on Christianity than on those who would take the name but not the responsibility. The abridgment is evenhanded and unforced. This is a story that should be heard more than once as its message may elude many contemporary readers. Wolf’s meticulous performance helps to infuse the theme into the mind’s eye of the listener.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Review by Christina Hardyment, The Times, 8 April 2008

We nearly never had the magical medieval tale of Gawain and the Green Knight. Written in around 1401 by an anonymous northerner, the only manuscript to survive got lost for two centuries before resurfacing in 1839. Part ghost story, part thriller, part romance, and part morality tale, it tells of the challenge issued to Gawain at Arthur’s court by a wizard in the guise of a gigantic green-clad knight, of Gawain’s near seduction by his host’s wife just before he meets the Knight, and of how honesty and chivalric courtesy (just) save his head.

New interest in it was aroused by the 1990 opera by Harrison Birtwhistle, but the bewitching music and pyrotechnical staging overwhelmed both poetry and plot. To enjoy it to the full, you need to hear it read aloud.

Until now, there was only Terry Jones’s 1997 reading of J. R. R. Tolkein’s 1975 version, but  two new tellings have just been released: the poet Simon Armitage reading his own version and Jasper ‘Peak Practice” Britton reading Benedict Flynn’s. All three  are unabridged. So which should you go for? Fan as I am of both Tolkein and Jones in other contexts, their version runs a poor third. Tolkein’s love of scholarly correctness gets in the way of the subtle ebb and flow of the original lines, and Jones has much more of a lisp here than in his excellent Fairy Tales.

Choosing between Armitage and Flynn is hard. Armitage is wittily modern and northern; Flynn respects, but is no slave to, the high language of romance. After the terrible Green Knight has picked up his head and gone, Armitage says ‘don’t be surprised if the plot turns pear-shaped’, while Flynn offers ‘no-one should wonder at [the game’s] weighty ending’. Both shrewdly strew it with alliteration, but differently: Flynn sheaves Gawain’s calves in shining grieves, Armitage has leg-guards lagging his flesh.

The narrations also contrast. Armitage’s lackadaisical intoning made me lose concentration on occasion, but there is a poetic magic about it that fits the fitts featly. Britton goes at a much livelier pace with a fine dramatic sense. So I’m going to suggest that you do as I did: get them both, and listen to them alternately, scene by scene. It works like binoculars: you get a deeper understanding of the original, and magnify its intensity.

The Lost World

Review by Rachel Redford The Oldie, April 2008

In this science fiction thriller about a death-defying search for dinosaurs in the uncharted depths of South America, Conan Doyle drew on contemporary interest in palaeontology and Darwinian evolutionary theory. Young journalist Edward has joined Professor Challenger’s expedition to prove himself worthy of his beloved Gladys’s hand, but his romanticism is soon rocked by the terrifying dangers of pterodactyls and ape men. As Thinking Boy’s Adventure it can’t be beaten – and the narrator sounds uncannily like a driven nineteenth-century adventurer himself!

The Lost World

Review by Publisher’s Weekly, February 2008

In 1912, Doyle took his Victorian readers deep into the South American jungles where, high atop a treacherous plateau, a small band of British explorers encountered a terrifying world of prehistoric creatures long thought lost to the sands of time. The adventurers included a young newspaper reporter, Ed Malone; the swashbuckling aristocrat, Lord Roxton; the skeptical scientist, Professor Summerlee; and the brilliant and bombastic Professor Challenger, who leads the party. Doyle unfolds high adventure at its best with fantastic encounters with pterodactyls, stegosaurs and cunning ape-men. Glen McCready’s performance captures the time and tone of Doyle’s material perfectly without straying into melodrama. He nicely balances Malone’s sense of youthful wonder with the professors’ scientific pragmatism, while fully exploiting the humor spread strategically throughout, planting numerous chuckles among the thrills. McCready’s entertaining reading more than fulfils the author’s introductory wish to ‘give one hour of joy to the boy who’s half a man, or the man who’s half a boy.’

The Sword In The Stone (unabridged)

Review by Publisher’s Weekly, March 2008

Neville Jason’s approach, he says, is to be ‘humble to the material’ he is working with and to let the ‘powers of absorption work.’ It is apt that in this classic retelling of the King Arthur legend, the wizard Merlin often teaches the boy Arthur (aka Wart) by changing him into other creatures &nash; a fish, a bird –to learn by absorption, by being, with empathy being the least of the lessons taught. It is a perfect fit of sensibilities. Jason, who was awarded the Diction Prize by Sir John Gielgud at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, delivers fully developed characters with such warmth and spark that listeners are instantly transported to Sir Ector’s castle. Originally written in 1938, this audiobook is perfect for any J. K. Rowling fan, as its humor, intellect and playfulness feels as contemporary as a Harry Potter novel. In fact, Rowling has described White’s Wart as ‘Harry’s spiritual ancestor.’ Combined with the brilliant performance by Jason, what more could a fantasy fan want?

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (unabridged)

Review by Publisher’s Weekly, January 2008

In the lovely, low tones of a fine storyteller, Oliver Fox Davies guides us through the stages of Tolstoy’s mini masterpiece. Davies’s skill with inflection, even within words, heightens the social satire of the early section and shifts with Ilyich’s slide into ever increasing pain and irritability. With the terror and anguish of approaching death, his voice grows convincingly hoarse. Until his illness, Ivan Ilyich had never reflected on his life. But he slowly comes to see his life as ‘a terrible, huge deception which had hidden life and death.’ As he lays dying, his lifelong friends think of the promotions that may come their way, and his wife ‘began to wish he would die, but she didn’t want him to die because then his salary would cease.’ He has always avoided human connection, but through the tender ministrations of a peasant he comes to recognize the ‘mesh of falsity’ in which he’s lived.

Written more than a century ago, Tolstoy’s work still retains the power of a contemporary novel.

The Lost World

Review by Sue Arnold, The Guardian, 22 March 2008

The upside of creating the world’s most famous (and smuggest) detective is celebrity, fortune and a knighthood; the downside is that you’re stuck with him. In desperation Conan Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes off, but his publisher insisted he resurrect him.

In 1912, twenty years after his Baker Street sleuth first appeared on the Victorian crime scene, Conan Doyle wrote The Lost World, his best and last non-Sherlock Holmes novel. Cross Scoop with Jurassic Park and you’re getting close. Lovesick young reporter Edward Malone is briskly informed by Gladys that if he wants to marry her he has first to prove his heroism, for it is her wish to bask in the reflected glory of a husband whose great deeds are universally acclaimed. Malone’s kindly news editor suggests he expose a bogus explorer, one Professor Challenger who claims to have stumbled across a lost civilisation in Brazil. Perched on an inaccessible plateau roughly the size and shape of Sussex at the back end of the Amazon, it is inhabited by prehistoric monsters and primitive tribes. Alas, all the evidence – the bones, hides, feathers etc – were lost on the return journey. A second debunking expedition is proposed. Glen McReady reads this good old-fashioned ripping yarn with relish. I liked the pterodactyls roaring as fearsomely as Hendon aerodrome on a race day.

The Enchanted Castle

Review by Rachel Redford, The Guardian, 23 March 2008

Magical tale of invisibility and a bejewelled princess still enchants.

The Gathering

Review by Christina Hardyment, The Times, 15 March 2008

When writers linger on close encounters of a genital kind it can make for tough listening. Anne Enright is undoubtedly a writer whose work, like that of James Joyce, is intensified by hearing it aloud. Fiona Shaw’s mesmerising reading of her 2007 Man Booker prize novel The Gathering is a tour de force.

But the story is a tough one to take: we are lodged in the anguished head of a frequently drunk, sexual obsessive whose too-tidy world is imperfectly papered over her muddled memories of childhood. The tipping point that forces her to confront her ill-starred Irish family and to revisit and reinterpret her past is the suicide of the charming waster of a brother who shared its horrors with her. Not, then, a cheerful earful, with overtones of the woodshed in Cold Comfort Farm, but one that lovers of deft word-handling and searingly truthful exposure of human frailty may enjoy sipped in small doses (to leave time for reflection), perhaps when alone.

The Great Poets – Emily Dickinson

Review by Rachel Redford, The Observer, 17 February 2008

Teresa Gallagher gives Emily Dickinson a New England voice that succeeds in conveying the poet’s distinctive duality: her gentle, mystical other-worldliness underscored by a resolute strength. In these 99 poems, recurring words – sea, Heaven, sun – chime mantra-like, along with the lyrical assonance and rhyme. Dickinson is acutely sensitive to the beauty of light and nature – ‘the colour on the cruising cloud’ – while her metaphors and personification intrigue. Does the 'door ajar' shut her out or invite her in? Is the ‘realm of you’ Heaven or some paradise of earthly love? Even though recurrent themes are death and self-denial, the mood is airy and buoyant, like the angel’s wings Dickinson imagines she wears.

Review from Waterstone’s Quarterly, Spring 2008

Emily Dickinson is remembered as a 19th-century New England recluse, but she is reaching a wider audience than she could ever have expected via this Great Poets audio series. A wide range of the poet’s work is here and, as read by the charismatic Teresa Gallagher, the problem of how to turn dashes into pauses is managed with aplomb. To quote the great lady, ‘Beauty be not caused – it is’; and this is beautiful.

Pollyanna

Review by AudioFile February/March 2008

A sincere thank you to the talented Laurel Lefkow for presenting this splendid 1913 classic in such a delightful manner that even somewhat jaded contemporary listeners will be enchanted. Pollyanna’s sweetly innocent personality and her ‘glad game’ of seeing the best in every situation are in stark contrast to the personalities of her sour and bitter Aunt Polly and even the maid, Nancy, who befriends Pollyanna during her sad early days. Each of these very different characters is warmly rendered by Lefkow. When Pollyanna is badly injured, her beliefs are challenged, a turn of events that brings an element of realism to this old-fashioned story. An excellent insert provides detailed notes about the book.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Review by Audiofile, February/March 2008

This meticulous abridgment does a good job with Burnett’s classic rags-to-riches story. Kindly fate transports an American boy, Cedric Errol, to England when he is discovered to be heir to the earldom of Dorincourt. Prepared to hate the American upstart, the crusty earl finds he can’t resist his grandson’s love. Teresa Gallagher’s gentle, refined voice brings the precocious Cedric into listeners’ hearts with arresting success. Equally well depicted are the pithy sayings of the ancient earl and Cedric’s mother’s bell-like tones. Characters and significant dialogue appear seamlessly, and there are few continuity issues in the abridgment. Narration and script combine to present a merry audiobook.

The Great Poets – John Milton

Review by Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times

This collection of Milton’s poetry is Naxos’s contribution to the celebrations surrounding the 400th anniversary of the birth of the great English poet. It is an accessible choice featuring short poems, the famous sonnets on his deceased wife, Cromwell and blindness, plus some extracts from the epic Paradise Lost (also available from Naxos in a four-hour reading by Anton Lesser). The quality of Derek Jacobi’s audio performances can be erratic, but he is on top form here, his sparkling confidence with meter and rhyme allowing meaning to be revealed. Samantha Bond’s expressive empathy also transcends the complex language and the classical references to deliver powerful ideas on politics (Milton was a republican), religion and love. Musicality is central to the poet’s works: his friend Henry Lawes set many of the poems to music, so it is fitting that his pieces, performed on original instruments, are integral to this production.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Review by Rachel Redford, The Oldie

The image of Little Lord Fauntleroy as a pampered, golden-curled boy in a ridiculous suit of velvet and lace is a travesty of the original and hugely successful 1855 story. Eight-year-old Cedric inherits riches: a castle and a title. He has to leave America where, despite his own poverty, he has befriended unfortunates, to join his old Scrooge of a grandfather in England. Of course his innate goodness and generous little heart win over the curmudgeonly old man. The unsentimental narration – and the drifts of Elgar – lift it into the realm of fable.

Dance Dance Dance (unabridged)

Review by Rachel Redford, The Observer

This is a story of searching, loss, sex and murder in a disjointed society, worked out through Murakami’s crazy collection of people. Narrator Rupert Degas gets it absolutely right. The unnamed ‘ordinary guy’ who becomes entangled in a succession of way-out experiences is rooted in a Japan drenched in American culture, not just Dunkin’ Donuts and rock music, but the corruption of corporate money. Degas’s subtle American narration sustains this duality. He also creates diverse voices brilliantly, such as the disenchantment of teenage Yuki in her monosyllabic ‘huh’, the other-world automaton pronouncements of the Sheep Man and the seductive tones of the call girls. Bewitching.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (unabridged)

Review by Christina Hardyment, The Times

Tolstoy wrote his short novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich after a dark night of the soul that led him to question his entire life, and eventually to find comfort in Christianity and peasant simplicites. The book is a coded version of his suffering and makes tough, but ultimately deeply rewarding listening. Oliver Ford Davies, the philosopher and actor fresh from a memorably gruff rendering of Diogenes Laertius for the Naxos audiobook Ancient Greek Philosophy, makes the dying Ilyich touchingly human.

Review by Rachel Redford, The Observer

Painfully and slowly, Judge Ivan Ilyich is dying and, as he does so, he comes to recognise the truth about his impeccable life. For all his propriety and success, it has been meaningless and empty. Ilyich loathes his wife and realises his ‘concerned’ colleagues are merely waiting to step into his shoes. And he recognises the selfless devotion with which he is cared for by the peasant boy Gerasim as the only real truth in the whole of his own shallow life. Only at the end, when Ilyich breaks through the ‘black sack’ of death, is he absolved. Ford Davies’s leisurely narration and the passages of Russian music complement Tolstoy’s serious theme and his presentation of Ilyich’s anguished emotions is masterly.

The Moonlit Road

Review by Synergy Magazine

What better way to enjoy a ghost story but by a camp fire, late at night, in the dark, surrounding by friends and ready to be scared? In these days of new technology the audio book of Ghost stories is a great alternative; sitting alone at night, with the lights off and with great narration and chilling music this CD set offers some great ghostly tales.

It is generally believed that the literature of the ghost tale ‘came of age’ in the nineteenth century and this collection certainly bears this out. These stories date from the mid- to late-nineteenth century and therefore show the form in its most developed form. All have a slow and deliberate building of mood, an emphasis on good storytelling and character and only reveal the ghostly or supernatural “twist” at the climax.

To Let by Bithia Mary Croker dates from the 1890s and not only offers a frightfully good ghost tale, but explores the life of the English living in India during this period. The Upper Berth by F. Marion Crawford is a well-known story, which combines all the elements of a good sea-tale with ghostly horror. The sheer descriptiveness of the tale and the nature of the ghost is enough to send shivers down the most reticent of spines.

The collection continues with five tales in all, also including An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street, by J. S. Le Fanu, That Damned Thing, and The Moonlit Road, by Ambrose Bierce. The narration by Jonathan Keeble and Clare Anderson is impeccable and with the addition of mood setting music, this is a superb set of ghost tales which will haunt any late night setting!

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Review by Sue Arnold, The Guardian

Fact, fiction, myth, opinion – Barnes’s series of disjointed narratives about Noah’s Ark, terrorist hijackers, shipwreck, woodworm, love and more is all of these. It leaves you torn between thinking that its sum is greater than its parts and that, then again, some of the parts are pretty damned good too, especially the half-chapter titled ‘Parenthesis’. Somehow this pithy new Alex Jennings recording perfectly succeeds in combining the various ‘history is bunk’ and ‘love conquers all’ strands.

Pollyanna

Review by Jeanette Larson, Library Media Connection

Naxos AudioBooks continues to release original readings about famous people with Great Scientists and Their Discoveries by David Angus. The short pieces provide a vibrant and intimate look at scientists, from Aristotle to Einstein, within the context of history. The British narrators provide a formality to the reading that is reminiscence of public television programs and the production is the perfect enhancement for science classes.

Great Expectations (unabridged)

Review by Sue Arnold, The Guardian

Maybe you should listen to this first to understand the impact it had on Mister Pip’s pupils. Too bad they didn’t hear Anton Lesser’s version, though chances are if they had, it would have affected them even more powerfully. Lesser reads so many audiobooks – I’ve just finished his beautiful if soporific rendering of Rumi’s Spiritual Verses – that you forget what a huge range his acting skills cover.

This is the perfect vehicle for his array of voices, accents and characters, starting with the terrifying Magwitch on the run (if that’s an appropriate description of a man wearing a leg iron) from the prison hulks moored off the Essex marshes, to cold, arrogant Estella, hardwired to break men’s hearts, and the steely lawyer Mr Jaggers, beside whom Lord Goldsmith looks like Bambi. The adventures of the upwardly mobile apprentice blacksmith turned gentleman have always trailed far behind Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities on my Dickens hit list – Pip is such an awful snob – but I’m bound to admit that Lesser makes him not only sympathetic but even likeable.

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