The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

Author: Margaret Atwood

Reader: Laural Merlington

Short Review: Margaret Atwood’s retelling of a portion of The Odyssey in Penelope’s voice, her contribution to the Canongate Myth Series, read by Laurel Merlington.

Long Review: I am a mythology nut. A buff. A, well, obsessive kook. I know this. I’m fine with this. And when I learned that I had missed the bus–that this series of books was underway and that it kicked off without me–I felt like I had caught someone kicking my dog.

Atwood, of course, retells Penelope’s story with a wonderful feminist twist. Atwood’s Penelope stands up for the maids, and criticizes her wayward husband and disingenuous suitors. She argues that her supposed beauty has long since faded, and that all of the men in the story are arguing over her for entirely unromantic reasons.

Laurel Merlington’s narration is engaging, sharp, and humorous. Her method of voicing the chorus is a bit shrill at times, but that seems fitting considering the messages they carry.

This was a good listen–I burned through it in an afternoon of puttering around my studio, and immediately missed my Ancient Greek companions. I look forward to listening to more audio books from the Canongate Myth Series.

Short Review: A beautifully-read version of a book I don’t actually like very much.

Long Review: Robertson Dean has a fantastic voice, and he portrays the different characters distinctly. I’d rather listen to the book than read it on paper. Having listened to the book, I’ll go out of my way to find more books narrated by Dean.

There are certainly some things about the story I like, but I’ve always found Cooper tiresome. I would strangle Natty Bumppo if I had to travel with him. Prattle prattle condescend prattle. Uncas, Chingachgook, and Cora strike me as the real heroes of the story. Cooper rambles far too much. He needed an editor. It could have been a great book had he had a good editor.

Go ahead, stone me to death.

Housekeeping: A Novel

Author: Marilynne Robinson

Read by: Becket Royce

Short Review: Robinson’s prize-winning, gorgeous, intricate novel about women and the fragility of family, and of sanity, and the need to create and maintain a sense of home, no matter what happens. It is read well, if not perfectly, by Beckett Royce.

Long Review: I love this novel. I’m not the only one–it was nominated for a Pulitzer and won the PEN/Hemingway Award when it was published in 1980. Robinson is immensely talented, and the characters she creates are intricate and engaging and often surprising. My heart ached for Ruthie and Lucille and Sylvie, and their shattered family in their cruel town. Robinson writes with an intricacy and specificity that I find breath-taking. I love the book on paper, so was interested to hear it as an audio book.

Beckett Royce has a good voice, and is a clear reader. But she had a vocal habit that grated on me. There is a way some people pause when they speak that they probably intend as a display of earnestness, but to my ear sounds false. Royce used it a lot as she read. And since she is essentially playing Ruthie as the reader for this book, it bothered me because Ruthie is reticent and not one to play at earnestness. Maybe I just love the book too much to hear it in someone else’s voice, rather than in the voice I imagine for Ruthie.

That said, I think books like this one–books that follow a single, engaging narrator, are some of the best candidates to become audio books. Maybe I’m,the only one who will find fault with Royce’s performance. I’d certainly be interested to hear other people’s reaction to her reading.

Lolita

Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Read by: Jeremy Irons

Short Review: Nabokov’s beautifully-written, disturbing story of a pedophile’s love for a young girl, read by the inimitable Jeremy Irons.

Long Review: Lolita is, of course, a classic. But an uncomfortable one. Humbert Humbert is quite the anti-hero: charming, brilliant, self-effacing and at the same time a disgusting, manipulative, immoral creep. The novel is a farce which uses Poe’s Annabel Lee as a jumping-off point to explain a terribly destructive fetish disguised with a pretty poetic bow.

The book relies on H.H.’s command of language and allusion to make the disgusting palpable. Casting Irons as the reader, and thus in the role he played in the film directed by Adrian Lyne, was a master stroke. H.H. narrates the novel, of course, and not just anyone can read that part convincingly. Jeremy Irons does. His voice is wonderful, his diction is precise, and he oozes the old-world breeding and education the role requires.