Recent audio books
Robert Cooper
To some of us solitude may be sitting on a park bench amidst a bustling city. To Trond Sander, seclusion is a rickety forest cabin in the far east of Norway. For company his only companion is his dog, Lyra. Isolation is 67-year-old Trond’s chosen existence — ‘all my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this’. Do not think for one moment that Out Stealing Horses is in any aspect claustrophobic or disheartening — quite the contrary. Although Trond has recently lost his wife and sister, this is an entirely gloom-free novel. Law-abiders and lovers of our four-legged friends can also rest easy, as no horses were stolen in the making of this novel. ‘Out stealing horses’ is merely a term used by Trond and his boyhood friend, Jon, when out on an earlymorning gallivant.
At times, for instance when reflecting
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second world war, we are on the edge of our seats — craving more information as Trond’s life and that of his family is tantalisingly unravelled. Even a mundane account of buying a bulb for his car, his passion for reading Dickens or chopping wood with his mysterious neighbour command our attention. This brilliant novel is short — the book is just 250 pages — but throughout the 7 hours on CD (Clipper Audio, unabridged on 6 CDs, £17.95) we are gradually fed morsels of Trond’s life until we are so emotionally involved with his past and present existence that we too are there in his cabin almost sharing his thoughts.
I have listened to some of the CDs many times, so frequently that more than one has started to disintegrate. This, I hasten to add, is not a manufacturing fault but due to my abominably rough treatment when changing the discs whilst driving. If I were to be penalised for ‘reckless driving whilst listening to Out Stealing Horses’, I think I would accept the penalty in the same manner as a recalcitrant youth accepts an Asbo as a badge of honour. Small wonder, then, that the book won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for Per Petterson and the prestigious International IMPAC
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Dublin Literary Award — at £100,000 the world’s most lucrative literary prize.
The reader, the American actor, Richard Poe, is superb. Whatever your attitude to living a solitary life in a Norwegian forest might be, it is impossible not to warm to Trond Sander. And much of this sincerity stems from Poe’s nimble interpretation of Petterson’s text. From the opening words (‘Early November. It’s nine o’clock. The titmice are banging against the window’) we know that this cabin is the place we want to be and that we need also to know everything about Trond.
I was much looking forward to listening to Tim Butcher reading his bestseller, Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart (Clipper Audio, 9 CDs 9 3/4 hours. £19.99). A gambler would surely have rated it a dead cert to be an audio-book winner. But on the whole there is no substitute for a tried and tested professional. Butcher’s presentation is breathless, hurried and really rather flat. It is as if he had been plucked hotfoot from the impenetrable Congo jungle and plonked into an airless cubicle in front of the microphone without time even for a gulp of thirst-quenching tea.
This was all the more disappointing as his admirable recreation of H. M. Stanley’s 1874 expedition tracing the course of the River Congo to the sea is ideal material for an audio book. That trek remains one of the most attritional and daring adventures ever attempted. In a journey that took nearly three years, only 144 of the original party of 356 survived. Blood River certainly warrants a quality recording; sadly this is not it. ❑
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