These are some audio-stories that I have recently listened to in the car as I trudge or zoom up and down the motorway to and from work each day.
You may recall from other posts, that I can't listen to anything too exciting or complex, because I can't not have accidents and concentrate at the same time. So, I tend to choose my story CDs from our local library using a system that is roughly alphabetical, tends to favour female authors, de-selects murder mysteries and modern chick-lit.
I often end up with poor Rosie Tralee who has left poverty in Ireland and ends up being a maid in a cruel household in Liverpool but then her luck changes and she ends up owning a department store. There are a surprising number of books that follow this kind of plot.
Whisper of Life by Gloria Cook is one of those books. But in this, Katie who is poor and working class and therefore ill-treated by her family is taken under the wings of a nice middle-class family, so that's alright then. There are 4 or 5 deaths and a kidnapping in a remarkably short space of time. But she gets engaged to a nice man, and the deaths are all people we don't like, so that's alright then, too. The best bit of this audio-book is the person who reads the story, who tries to do post-war upper middle class accents and the accents of the Devonshire hoi-polloi who litter their streets. Made me laugh out loud! No score for this one.
Naomi Alderman's book, 'Disobedience' is an interesting study of what it might be like to rebel against one's Jewish up-bringing and community. So, I learned a lot about the Jewish culture in Hendon and the story was 5/10. I found the characters a bit hard to believe in.
Barbara Comyn's book was called 'The Vet's Daughter', so I assumed that she would be treated cruelly, run away and then find her way to riches, through marriage, in America. But actually, it was a good book. The story had been triggered by a newspaper cutting (Victorian, I think) about a young woman who performed a magical display of levitating above the ground in a London park, and was trampled to death in the consequent crowd surge. 6/10
You may recall from other posts, that I can't listen to anything too exciting or complex, because I can't not have accidents and concentrate at the same time. So, I tend to choose my story CDs from our local library using a system that is roughly alphabetical, tends to favour female authors, de-selects murder mysteries and modern chick-lit.
I often end up with poor Rosie Tralee who has left poverty in Ireland and ends up being a maid in a cruel household in Liverpool but then her luck changes and she ends up owning a department store. There are a surprising number of books that follow this kind of plot.
Whisper of Life by Gloria Cook is one of those books. But in this, Katie who is poor and working class and therefore ill-treated by her family is taken under the wings of a nice middle-class family, so that's alright then. There are 4 or 5 deaths and a kidnapping in a remarkably short space of time. But she gets engaged to a nice man, and the deaths are all people we don't like, so that's alright then, too. The best bit of this audio-book is the person who reads the story, who tries to do post-war upper middle class accents and the accents of the Devonshire hoi-polloi who litter their streets. Made me laugh out loud! No score for this one.
Naomi Alderman's book, 'Disobedience' is an interesting study of what it might be like to rebel against one's Jewish up-bringing and community. So, I learned a lot about the Jewish culture in Hendon and the story was 5/10. I found the characters a bit hard to believe in.
Barbara Comyn's book was called 'The Vet's Daughter', so I assumed that she would be treated cruelly, run away and then find her way to riches, through marriage, in America. But actually, it was a good book. The story had been triggered by a newspaper cutting (Victorian, I think) about a young woman who performed a magical display of levitating above the ground in a London park, and was trampled to death in the consequent crowd surge. 6/10
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