Audiobook Review : Payment In Blood by Elizabeth George
Written By: amodini
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Dec•
15•21
Author : Elizabeth George
Narrators : Davina Porter
Genre : Mystery
Publisher : Recorded Books
Listening Length : 14 hours 35 minutes
Rating : 4.2/5
Narrator Rating : 4.5/5
Even though I’ve now read a handful of Inspector Lynley books, and find her work just as engrossing as Agatha Christie’s although in a more modern way, Payment In Blood seems closest to Agatha Christie’s mysteries, and a little similar to the recent film “Knives Out” in that it is a mystery played out in one location – a remote B&B/resort in the Scottish Highlands. A play is being planned and the playwright, producer and actors have gathered together in a small village B&B. The playwright Joan Sinclair then gets murdered by a Scottish dirk through her throat. Inspector Thomas Lynley, Sergeant Barbara Havers and forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James are summoned to solve the mystery, to their surprise because the area is out of their normal jurisdiction, but matters are complicated further because the string of suspects – and there are many – includes Lady Helen Clyde, the woman Lynley loves.
Since the murder has happened at the isolated estate which houses the resort, the local police have managed to quarantine the guests there, and the police officers begin to question them. While Lynley’s judgment is clouded by jealousy – it comes out that Lady Helen had spent the night with one of actors of the party – Havers and St. James must use their impartial wits to uncover the truth.
I believe in my previous reviews of Elizabeth George’s books, I have written odes in praise of the author’s skill as a mystery writer. She is in top form here as well, building us a nest of red herrings. The characters of this book – people in the theater party – while being proficient and well-known in the industry go back a long time and have known each other enough to develop friendships, relationships, rifts and jealousies. Some of them are connected by marriages (and divorces), and there are even a pair of sisters who have little love for each other. It is a large cast of characters but George manages to keep us on the straight and narrow and weave in all the threads beautifully, to give us a sumptuous, juicy mystery.
Narrator Davina Porter is wonderful. I haven’t heard her before but look forward to listening to more of her work.
Audiobook Review : A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier
Written By: amodini
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Nov•
17•21
Author : Tracy Chevalier
Narrators : Fenella Woolgar
Genre : Historical
Publisher : Penguin Audio
Listening Length : 10 hours 51 minutes
Rating : 4/5
Narrator Rating : 5/5
I’ve read two of Tracy Chevalier’s books before – Remarkable Creatures about young fossil hunter Mary Anning, and Girl With a Pearl Earring. I have liked both. Chevalier’s main characters often are women, women who don’t want to/can’t abide by society’s rules. Out of need or necessity, they pick their own path, choosing interesting vocations or hobbies – which Chevalier describes in great detail and are a pleasure to read about. She has a way of writing which builds characters with depth. We know who they are, what they think and how they might behave.
In A Single Thread, 38 year old spinster Violet Speedwell has moved out of her carping mother’s house and come away to be a single woman in the town of Winchester, penury-ridden though that existence might be. Pragmatic Violet knows that she is regarded as a “surplus” woman, and will probably remain single after the death of her fiancé in the Great War, dependent upon her mother and brother. Her initial loneliness is lessened when she comes across the broderer community of the local Winchester Cathedral, a group of women who volunteer their time to embroider and make kneelers – cushions which church-goers use to make the hard stone benches a little more comfortable during time spent in the church.
Typist by day and borderer now, in her free time, Violet makes new friends – Gilda, Dorothy and Arthur (the bell-ringer). She finds comfort in her new found friends, and is finally finding a place and a life for herself. Her new found independence brings other changes – she tries a walking vacation all by herself, which is unusual for the times. Little by little her non-traditional life begins to sort itself out. She already has convictions; now she gains the courage to go with them.
A Single Thread is a marvelous read. I liked Violet Speedwell. She is an interesting, sympathetic protagonist, and her story with its difficulties and dilemmas is arresting. Narrator Fenella Woolgar is superb and a pleasure to listen to. Highly recommended.
Audiobook Review : Educated by Tara Westover
Written By: amodini
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Oct•
20•21
Author : Tara Westover
Narrators : Julia Whelan
Genre : Non-fiction; Memoir
Publisher : Random House Audio
Listening Length : 12 hours 10 minutes
Rating : 4.3/5
Narrator Rating : 4.5/5
In this book, author Tara Westover describes her childhood with her parents and her siblings on a rural farm in Idaho. Her father is what we would term a conspiracy theorist, someone who’s rabidly anti-government, convinced that the government is out to get him and his family, subjugate them and take away their rights. Thus, he is always predicting the end of the world and preparing himself and his family for it – storing food, fuel, ammunition and supplies in underground bunkers for the day that they will need them. Her mother, although initially displaying an independence of spirit, later becomes devoted to her husband’s theories and becomes equally complicit in an abusive family life where the children seemingly have no voice and are prevented from going to school or develop interests outside of the home.
Tara manages to leave the family home by getting into college by the skin of her teeth, often wondering whether she will have the money to pay for her tuition and board. As she learns about various world events and gets a perspective of her own, she begins to view her life in her parental home, a home that she does not go back to, as the abuse that it actually is.
In her details about her day-to-day life, she painstakingly sketches a portrait of her parents and some of her siblings. They all work on the family business – her father’s junkyard often in dangerous conditions. None of them actually go to school or receive much of a homeschooling. Tara teaches herself the basics and studies for the ACT. Learning and science is pooh-poohed upon; the Westovers do not go see doctors, even for serious injuries.
Some of the situations Tara faces are harrowing but her description is unflinching yet never cruel. The affection, if I can call it that, that tinges this memoir probably comes from the fact that even though she now understands the abuse she’s suffered at their hands, they are still her parents and her family, and that mountain farm was still her childhood home. Her journey is remarkable and her tenacious courage in standing up for what she believes in is to be applauded. This book was an engrossing tale and read almost like fiction. Highly recommended.
I’ve heard two books by narrator Julia Whelan before – Gone Girl and The Wife Between Us. She is just as good as she was narrating those books, does male and female voices equally well, and gives apt voice to Westover’s tumultuous emotions.
Book Review : Born A Crime by Trevor Noah
Written By: amodini
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Sep•
22•21
Author : Trevor Noah
Genre : Non-fiction; Memoir
Publisher : One World
Pages : 304
Rating : 3.5/5
I borrowed Born A Crime by Trevor Noah from the library because I do watch Trevor Noah’s show on Comedy Central, I have seen his stand-up comedy and heard about his background. While his show is entertaining, I do find him a little juvenile as compared to Jon Stewart, the previous host of The Daily Show, but that might be because he is trying to target the younger demographic. His live stand-up comedy show (which I saw a couple of years back) was a lot more “mature” and far more perspicacious than I’d thought it would be.
The tone of this book is trademark Noah – informal, colloquial, casual. And interesting.
Noah was born in South Africa during apartheid, to an African Xhosa woman and a Swiss Caucasian man, when an inter-racial relationship was a crime punishable by a 5 year prison term. So in the initial years at least, relatively light colored Trevor had to be “hidden away” and couldn’t be seen with his mother – as in she could not identify herself as his mother, lest she be convicted of the crime an inter-racial relationship. Later, as apartheid lifted, Trevor had more freedom and he narrates his life as his little family unit – him and his mother and later his younger brother move back-and-forth between black neighborhoods and black townships like Soweto.
His independent-minded, strong-willed mother Patricia strove to give him everything within her power, because she wanted him to have a better life than she had had. His childhood was mired in poverty and he describes quite a few hair-raising episodes – like the one time he and his mother jump out of a moving bus – and some hard ones, like the time in his life when he ate caterpillars, day after day; he describes the taste and texture and feeling of eating caterpillars – extremely unpleasant – and tells us that it is the food of the poorest of the poor.
Noah describes himself as an imp, a prankster and a practical joker, a hustler who managed to earn a few bucks here and there using his street-smarts. He also describes situations where he was caught between two worlds – he was light colored enough to not be considered black enough, and he didn’t actually fit in with the colored folks – and had to pick a side.
He endured hard times, but Noah is completely frank and honest about all his experiences, and tells them with grace and good humor, qualities that he appears to carry with him in real life. Despite all the hard times, the injustices, the unfairness of it all, he comes across not as an embittered young man but someone who appreciates life, a person imbued with a splendidness of spirit.
Audiobook Review : Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee
Written By: amodini
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Aug•
25•21
Author : Harper Lee
Narrators : Reese Witherspoon
Genre : Romance
Publisher : Caedmon
Listening Length : 6 hours 57 minutes
Rating : 1/5
Narrator Rating : 4.5/5
I’d wanted to read “Go Set a Watchman” because it’s written by the author of To Kill a Mockingbird and I was curious about the sequel. This book was disappointing, because even though it is chronologically a sequel it doesn’t follow through with an equally interesting story or even one that continues in the same spirit.
Scout, the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird is now a young woman, 26 year old Jean Louise living in New York , and she’s visiting home. This time though, she notices that her father – the saintly Atticus Finch, who has taught her everything she knows and believes about morality and equality, has racist views. And so does her boyfriend Henry Clinton. Confrontation brings disillusionment and a whole lot of gobbledygook about heartbreak.
To say that I’m confused is putting it mildly. This book completely reverses the character of Atticus. It is not a very coherent book. Although it is not very long, it meanders around for about 3 hours before bringing us to the crux of the problem, and then 4 long hours later comes to an unsatisfactory end. Jean Louise is the main protagonist and she is an annoying one – a smug, entitled miss who goes to pieces when she finds dearest daddy isn’t what she thought he was; I wasn’t sure I felt for her.
If you loved “To Kill A Mockingbird” you should skip this book. Now I read, as I go about finding how dear old Atticus went from being the upholder of justice to just another Southern man subtly advocating segregation, that it was an initial draft of Mockingbird. It does read like an unpolished draft, so I see no purpose in its release, except to tarnish the image of a much-beloved, righteous hero.
Narrator Reese Witherspoon does a marvelous job with her Southern accents, and helped me finish this otherwise disappointing book.
