Short review: One of my favorite humorous novels, expertly read by Martin Jarvis. I’m sure I’ll listen to this book over and over again.

Long review: I have a deep and abiding love for this novel. I’ve read it on paper a number of times, and was happy to find an audio version of it. I’m an unabashed fan of both authors, and find works like this one feel particularly suited to audiobook format, since it is such a storyteller’s story. It’s funny and silly, but also examines important questions about belief and ethics. It’s peopled by interesting, charismatic characters who are wonderful to listen to. And, as is vital to a work like this, the authors know the source material they’re playing with.

In short, the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley become unlikely friends way back in the way back, and both end up being posted on Earth in the UK in our modern world, expected to do their work to support their sides in the great ongoing war between heaven and hell. The two fall in love with their lives on Earth, and decide that perhaps the apocalypse wouldn’t be all that great for them and maybe should be prevented. They set out to track down the Anti-Christ, an 11 year old boy unaware of his true parentage, and try to prevent his rise. As the story progresses, we learn of Agnes Nutter, Witch and her descendant Anathema Device, witch-hunters, the Four Horsemen, some interesting kids, and a number of other kooks wandering around this Gaiman/Pratchett universe of the book. I won’t say more, because I can’t say any of it as well as they did.

Middlesex: A Novel

Available from Audible.com

Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Reader: Kristoffer Tabori

Short Review: A novel I absolutely love, full of gorgeous language, beautifully-rendered characters, and entrancing history and myth. Tabori’s reading is downright fantastic, and Eugenides remains one of the most talented writers of his generation. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read or listened to.

Long Review: I read this book on paper several years ago and found it absolutely fascinating. Eugenides treats his subject matter with a great deal of tenderness and honesty, never turning towards the louche or sensational.

For those who’ve missed the hype: the protagonist of Middlesex is a hermaphrodite who is raised as a girl and then chooses to live as a man upon discovering the nature of his unusual condition. That’s not a spoiler–the book opens with this very information. The book is about genetics, the nature of love and family, the natures of human sexuality and gender (which are two different things), Smyrna, Greek-Americans, silk, the foundation of the Nation of Islam, Detroit, racial relations . . . it’s about many fascinating things. It is so engrossing because Caliope/Cal is a true work of art. Eugenides knows how to build a character. He richly deserved that Pulitzer.

Because I loved the paper book so much, I was a bit worried about picking up the audiobook. It drives me batty when someone reads a book I love in the wrong voice for my head. Thankfully, I could listen to Tabori read the phonebook. I wasn’t familiar with him prior to this book, but I look forward to hearing more of his work. Tabori switches comfortably between the voices of many characters, from the basement-deep Jimmy Zizmo to the quavering, fragile Desdemona-as-grandmother. He plays the characters well, but doesn’t push it too far. He’s clearly playing Cal playing the other characters, rather than trying to leave his roll as first-person narrator for those other characters.

In part, the book is so successful because Eugenides is such a careful researcher. Descriptions of Smyrna, silk production, the birth of the US car industry, prohibition, Turkey, genetics, gender reassignment, and many other topics all ring true. Without that underlying research, the book would fall apart. I finished the book with a list of things I wanted to research and a real sense of wonder about Smyrna in particular.

Overall, I think the most surprising thing about Middlesex is its humor. If you describe this book or The Virgin Suicides to someone who isn’t familiar with Eugenides’ work, they’ll assume both stories are weighty, heartbreaking tragedies. In fact, both stories are so engaging because they’re so drenched in wit and humor. Cal, in particular, is charmingly self-effacing and funny. He’s not self-pitying, he doesn’t chastise his relatives for his treatment or his condition. He recognizes the absurdity of humanity itself, as should we all.

Author: John Connolly

Reader: Steven Crossley

Short Review: A decent book with a major flaw, read beautifully by Steven Crossley. Connolly’s book starts out as a promising depiction of the interior life of a bookish, depressed boy with apparently undiagnosed epilepsy and OCD. Unfortunately, it continues on into an all-too-familiar series of retellings of classic fairytales, several of which villanize women for no clear reason. I expected and hoped for more from the book itself. Thankfully, I truly enjoyed Crossley’s narration, and allowed it to carry me through a book that otherwise left me scratching my head and feeling disappointed and maligned.

Long Review: I’m a true mythology buff, so I’ve read many books that recast fairytales and myths in new lights. Some authors do a wonderful job with such work–Neil Gaiman, Angela Carter, Anne Sexton, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and T.H. White all come to mind as masters. But many others can’t meet the task and end up producing novels that can’t match the wonder of the original tales or modernize them in interesting, contemporary ways. I think Connolly’s book falls in that later group.

There are some shining moments in the novel. I love David’s wondrous relationship to books, and how that connects him to his mother, arguably the only positive female character in the book. Her explanation of how real stories feel about the inconsequential stories in newspapers is lovely, and will stay with me. The end of the book is also very appealing to me. I love thinking of the adult David continuing to serve books and being a good man, once all is said and done. In general, I think Connolly is a good writer with a good sense of pace and language. I think his take on sibling rivalry is interesting, as is his vision of a child’s relationship to reality, fantasy, and death. While I was listening early on, I enjoyed the book and the narration equally. It was when I was thinking about the book between listenings that I became frustrated.

What truly disappoints me is the misogynist twist Connolly gives most of the tales used in his book. Every major female character other than David’s mother is criticized for her eating habits or weight, sexual choices, appearance, strength, weakness, hunger . . . it’s too much and too common in the book to ignore. Two persistent villains are male, yes, but we expect a werewolf and a Trickster to be villains. I won’t quibble about the child-eating witches who show up in the book as villains, since they were villains in the original forms of the tales. But was it really necessary for Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and all of the other women who show up in the book to be morphed into disgusting, senseless villains? Even Rose, David’s step-mother, is attacked for eating too much and having sex out of wedlock. What is that about? Could Connolly think of no way to retell or change those classic tales without turning all of the female central characters into monsters? Why could none of the kind characters in the book who help David in the other world be female? It really makes me wonder about the author’s views on women. Over and over again, the misogyny forced me out of the story. If Connolly needed to make so many women villains, he should have given more thought to why he needed to do so and addressed that in the book. As it is, the thread seems to reveal more about Connolly than it does about David, and it leaves me loath to bother with the rest of Connolly’s catalog.

As angry as Connolly’s misogyny makes me, I stuck with the book because Crossley’s reading is downright beautiful. I fell for him as a narrator with In The Woods. If anything, his work improves with this novel. His voice is clear and layered, his diction is great, and he voices the different characters distinctly without making too much fuss. I will absolutely seek out more books read by Crossley. I wish we’d set up our review system here at Books For Ears so we review books and readers separately: Crossley gets five stars, Connolly gets 2, max.

Author: Roald Dahl

Reader: Eric Idle

Short Review: Dahl’s award-winning children’s book read wonderfully by Eric Idle.

Long Review: Eric Idle does a fantastic job with the book. Fantastic. He’s a man who understands humor, kids, storytelling, and his own vocal and acting abilities. I picked this up at the library expecting a nice nostalgic trip back to Dahl’s universe. I knew Idle would do a good job, but I also knew I’d read this book many times, and had it read to me, and seen a couple of film adaptations of the story. I didn’t expect to be blown away by a book that blew me away when I was 6.

I should have known that Eric Idle would knock it out of the park. His diction is great, his accents are great, and he developed distinctive voices for each character. He doesn’t hold back at all–his reading is energetic and funny and passionate in all the best ways. I laughed out loud at several points while listening (which can be problematic when you commute via public transit like I do), so I can imagine that an engaged kid would be rolling around on the floor laughing at choice moments.

I don’t have kids, but I wouldn’t hesitate to play this for my nieces or nephew, who range in age from 5 though 12. There are a couple of words in the book that some parents may not want their children to hear–”ass” is used to refer to human anatomy at one point, and I’m sure some other words passed my notice. The book has received some sharp criticism over the years both for long sections describing the Bucket family’s poverty and for the depiction of bratty kids who receive strange punishments. I happen to think such criticisms are silly and give children too little credit for their strength, sensitivity, and abilities to reason and think in the abstract. You may want to take my opinion with a grain of salt, however, since I’m the type of liberal Auntie who almost always comes down in favor of a child’s autonomy and freedom. I am an Auntie who grew up with a bookshelf full of Dahl, Seuss, Tolkein, Sendak, L’Engle, and the like, afterall, so I guess it’s to be expected.

 Author: Neil Gaiman

 Reader: Neil Gaiman

 Short Review: Neil Gaiman reads his Newbery Medal winning book beautifully. His nod to Kipling’s The Jungle Book is just scary enough, intriguing, inventive, well-written, enchanting . . . it’s downright wonderful. I loved Bod, Silas, Scarlett, Liza, Miss Lupescu, and the rest of the graveyard’s denizens and rooted for them throughout the story. I miss them. I’ll return to this book again and recommend it to adults and kids.

Long Review: I’m a fan of Gaiman’s, and I am always intrigued by critically-acclaimed young adult fantasy, so I had to listen to this book. I was hopeful, but also worried. Some of the best books I’ve ever read were those I read when I was 10 or 12. I return to those books and keep tabs on books written for older kids, hoping to find more books to cherish and to foist on my growing nieces and nephews. But many things we’re supposed to love just fall flat for me. I’m not that impressed by some of the most beloved YA books, and some of the ones I did love then show me all of their holes when I pick them up now. This one, however, makes the good list. It’s rich enough for adults, appropriate for older kids, and enchanting for both.

Firstly, Gaiman is good at holding back. So many authors hand you all of the keys right at the beginning of the journey, and then you don’t have much to puzzle through and have less reason to keep going. Gaiman fights the urge to make sure he has told us everything there is to tell, so we keep reading, trying to line up our questions with possible answers, paying close attention to every little clue, wondering whether a character will return or a path will reappear. He refers to fascinating historical events and invents wondrous rituals and characters and communities, but he doesn’t give you so much information that any become boring. Neither does he condescend to his readers. I hate it when writers assume that kids can’t handle any frightening truths about life and death. In fact, kids see as much if not more terror and sadness as adults, and most of them don’t like being coddled. Gaiman doesn’t condescend to his readers or to the children who feature in his books.

Gaiman also happens to write strong female characters well. I wish I didn’t need to congratulate authors for doing that, but it still isn’t a given. Gaiman is a father to two daughters as well as the son whose childhood visits to a graveyard inspired this book. I think his relationship with his girls and the women in his life help him write girls and women well. That ability is particularly important for children’s and YA writers because so many boys are still hesitant to read books with female protagonists. Here, a boy is at the center of the story, but he’s surrounded by smart, heroic, strong, loving women and he cares for and respects them as much as he does Silas. It warms the cockles of my heart, that does.

Gaiman’s mythos is rooted firmly in the old greats. We see glimpses of well-researched historical fact, notice a figure from Grimm here and and an allusion to the Odyssey there. But from those roots, he takes us in very interesting directions. I love how he recasts traditional villains in new ways, making us wonder how evil some of the things we’ve had nightmares about really are. He takes the trope of fractured fairy tales a step further than many of his contemporaries. Gaiman doesn’t bother to argue with Grimm about who really understands monsters—he just plain rewrites the story in his way. It works.

I am impressed by Gaiman’s reading. I thought he did a great job with Fragile Things, and, if anything, he has gotten better. Gaiman has a nice voice, a good sense of character separation, paces himself well, and uses clear diction even when he is reading in different, heavier accents.

My only complaint is that a sequel isn’t available yet. I want to see more from this world, and I hope to see it soon.

Author: Michael Chabon
Reader: Peter Riegert

Extra features: The audiobook includes an interview with Michael Chabon about his inspiration for the book, his favorite books and genres, and his writing process.

Short Review: Chabon’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning alternate history of a world without Israel but with a temporary Jewish homeland in Sitka, Alaska. Hard-boiled detective Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of a junkie chess-player with his partner and cousin Berko Shemets, a half-Tlingit, half-Jewish cop who is a good father, a good Jew, and a good partner trying to save Landsman from himself. As the case progresses, more and more connections to organized crime, shady US government machinations, separatist Orthodox communities, and zealotry reveal themselves. Riegert is an ideal reader, comfortable with accents, Yiddish, noir, and sadness.

Long Review: I love this book. I read it on paper first, and was anxious to hear how well Reigert would handle Landsman’s voice. He does a masterful job. The book is written in the third person, but Landsman is on just about every page, so we hear his speech over and over. Reigert is careful to give Lansman, Berko Shemetz, and the other major characters distinct voices and rhythms, and he does a very good job of it. Like all of the best audiobook readers I’ve heard, Riegert balances acting with diction; maintaining a good rhythm and drawing a complete character while also keeping his accented speech easy to understand.

The novel is set in Sitka, Alaska in an alternate history. In the world of the novel, Israel fell to Arab attack in 1948, and the US agreed to make a temporary semi-autonomous federal district in Sitka for Jewish refugees. Sitka’s term of independence is ending, and all of the Jewish refugees there must prepare to leave for new homes elsewhere. As the local police are wrapping up their case files to hand over to the Americans, a junkie is murdered in the hotel where Landsman lives and Landsman takes the case. He should file the case away as quickly as possible but can’t let it go. The deeper Landsman investigates the victim and his connections, the more entangled he becomes.

Chabon writes wonderful characters, in this and all of his novels. Landsman, his ex-wife and boss Bina, Berko Shemetz, and the rest of the characters in the novel are engaging and deep and fascinating. You root for Landsman, but you also want to strangle him. Riegert’s narration intensifies that connection to Landsman and the rest. I found myself worrying about them all while listening to the novel, even though I already knew what was coming next.

Chabon does amazing things with language and speech in this novel. I’m no expert on Yiddish, of course, but I love the way Chabon intertwines Yiddish with noir phrasing and settings. It flips the whole hard-boiled detective genre–in a good way. I doubt there will ever be a sequel, but I would absolutely love the chance to follow Landsman and Shemetz on another case.

All in all, this is a fascinating, entertaining, beautifulky-read audiobook and one I know I’ll return to.

Author: Annie Proulx

Reader: Paul Hecht

Short Review: Proulx’s amazing, National Book Award- and Pulitzer-winning novel about loss, reclamation, love, and Newfoundland read well but slightly too stiffly by Paul Hecht.

Long Review: I love this novel, well and truly. It’s one of the finest books I’ve read on paper in years, and I know I will read it on paper again and again. Proulx wove so many beautiful and poignant things into its cloth: knitting, Newfoundland, fishing, storms, love, loss, community, abuse, work, family, writing, learning, risk, friendship, knots, failure, superstition . . . It is many things, but at its heart it is the story of a broken man who fails again and again, yet finally manages to redeem his own life and his children’s lives by going to his ancestral home and starting over. Proulx’s language is precise, and simple, and right over and over again. I think she has proven to be one of the best writers in the English language of our age, and I feel very lucky to have access to her work.

This is when I should probably admit that I have a serious crush on Newfoundland, and Proulx’s combination of the setting and repeated references to hand-knits would have kept me engaged in this book even if it had been pap. Thankfully, it’s brilliant, and it has enough in it other than knitting and Newfoundland that I can talk to normal, healthy people about it without making them twitch and attempt to force-feed me sedatives so I’ll stop talking about moving to Newfoundland and how vital knitting is in the novel.

Hecht is a good reader, but not an ideal one. I liked the audiobook, but I didn’t love it as much as I loved the paper book. His speech is a bit too formal, and a bit too stiff. It isn’t bad–it just doesn’t match what my mind needed. That said, I still loved listening to the audiobook because I love the characters and the story so dearly. I think my reaction to the audiobook is similar to the way I react to just about any movie based on a book I love. I may just love this book too much to be entirely happy with anyone who reads it aloud.

I’ve read some amateur reviews that complained about the spareness of Proulx’s language, the length of the book, and the supposed lack of action in it. All three complaints baffle me. I know there is an abridged version of the audiobook available, and that too makes scratch my head. I can’t puzzle out why anyone would want this story to be any shorter, whether on paper or on CD. With both the paper and audiobook versions, I was sad to finish the story, and I’ll miss Quoyle and Agnes and Wavey.

 In the Woods

 Author: Tana French

 Reader: Steven Crossley

Short Review: This Edgar Award winning novel traces a murder in Ireland, following the detectives investigating the case and flashing back to an earlier, similar unsolved case. It is a good novel beautifully read by Crossley, but the novel itself annoys me in a few spots (which I won’t actually describe, because we try very hard to not throw spoilers about).

Long Review: This is French’s first novel, and it bodes well. Set in Dublin, the book follows detectives (Adam) Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox as they investigate a puzzling murder case in the Dublin suburbs. A young girl is found dead on an archaeological site, and no motive or suspects present themselves. The case seems to echo one from Ryan’s childhood, though, and the connections between the two cases become obsessions for Ryan and Maddox.

I won’t say more about the plot of the book. I will say that Crossley is a very talented reader. The book is Rob’s first-person narrative, so Crossley plays Rob throughout. Though Rob is Irish, he was educated at a British boarding school, so has a posh English accent. Crossley has a wonderful voice and very good diction, but he doesn’t sound overly mannered or formal as he reads. Because the book is narrated by Rob, this is vital. First person narrators rarely sound like elocution professors, at least in my head. Also, Crossley generally does a good job with the Irish accents that crop up in the book, which makes a big difference to me.

Cassie really comes off as the protagonist, at least to me. She is at the center of French’s second book, The Likeness, and that alone makes me want to read it. Cassie is smart, funny, and strong, and really the sort of female character I wish would show up in every book and movie made from here on out.

The bits of the book that annoy me are part and parcel of the story, so I forgive the author. I think Ryan and Maddox are well-drawn characters. I just don’t always like Rob very much. Frankly, I want to throttle him. That’s really required by the book though, so I don’t hold it against French. I have read the book on paper as well as listened to the audiobook, and my reaction to the plot and to Ryan doesn’t really change from one format to the other.

 Short Review: A solid book of short stories read beautifully by the author.
 Long Review: I am a fan of Gaiman’s, so I was bound to pick this up eventually. Jeanne’s glowing review spurred me to pick it up at the library, and I was not disappointed in the least.

As is often the case, Gaiman’s publisher released this anthology of short stories not long after his novel Anansi Boys became such a huge hit. Sometimes those volumes of short stories, collected from periodicals hither and yon, are a waste of paper. Well, not this one. This is a solid collection of stories, as evidenced by the number of awards won by individual short stories in the anthology.

The Huge-Award winning “A Study in Emerald” is one of the standouts in the collection. I’m a Lovecraft fan and a Conan Doyle fan, so I was a bit wary of that story in particular. I didn’t see how the two could be blended. Well, of course, Gaiman did, and he melded the two giant’s universes gorgeously.

“October in the Chair” is another gem. It’s a story within a story, and the frame story in and of itself is one of the most enchanting things I’ve ever come across. I will never think of the months in the same way again. Gaiman built a new mythos and dropped it right into my head with a satisfying clink.

“Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire” is pithy and funny and good, and a great way to flip classic horror onto its head.

A few of the stories fell flat for me, but the best stories in the anthology were so intriguing that I know I’ll listen to at least those again and again. And the listening is truly enriched by Gaiman’s narration. Many authors have no business reading their work aloud–that’s not true of Gaiman. His voice is expressive, his timing is great, and his diction is beautiful. I’d actually like him to take work as an audiobook reader for other writers, but I don’t think that’s terribly likely. Instead, I’ll just cross my fingers and hope he narrates some more of his own work for future audiobooks.

Short Review: Atwood’s Governor General’s Award-winning bildungsroman about girls’ cruelty to other girls, art, childhood, and memory; read crisply by Barbara Caruso. The book follows Elaine Risley, an artist, as she remembers her youth in Canada while preparing for a retrospective of her artwork. It is heartbreaking and beautiful, which makes it hard to listen to at times. Pain is perhaps more real when it’s expressed out loud–this isn’t a fun listen, but it’s a very good one.

Long Review: I love this book, and it breaks my heart over and over again. I hate the concept of “chick lit,” but I do believe there are certain books that speak so clearly of girls’ and women’s experiences that they are ours to read and know–this is one of those books. In a way, I worry about who reads it, because I don’t want anyone to use this sharp, brilliant novel as proof of how evil girls are to other girls. Atwood deserves better, and girls and women deserve more credit than that.

Caruso was well-cast in this role. Her reading is never sappy, never self-pitying. She is a journalist reporting on her own youth and life, and she’s as hard on herself as she is on Cordelia, her nemesis and friend. Elaine repeatedly points the failures of her own memory–as a young adult, she had forgotten about her friends’ cruelty to her. As she ages different things trigger painful memories to resurface, and she is forced to realize that she tolerated intolerable things, and to wonder why.

The book is structured as a series of flashbacks, which is perhaps the only way to accurately portray the reflection on and reclamation of childhood memories by adults. The flashbacks are entwined in a story of Elaine’s preparation for a retrospective gallery show of her art. Elaine as a child is fragile, confused, and off-kilter much of the time. As an adult, Elaine seems solid, organized, and confident in most things. She pieces her memories together with a thesis in mind, it seems, and has no trouble convincing us of her victimization and recovery. I find it particularly intriguing that Atwood and Caruso conspire to make us fall so totally for this character who isn’t trying to elicit sympathy or demand justice. Elaine just states the truth of her memories and moves forward, interested in making sense of her experience without wallowing in it. We should all aspire to be such memoirists.