Talking Books

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Photo by Sam Mills

I travel to work by car. I know I shouldn't; that it's better for me and better for the environment if I travel by train. But it takes so long. And I'm not a very organised person. I can't seem to shop and have stuff ready just to throw into a frypan or the oven and so compile an appetising evening meal for Alex and I. And I really want to get out for a walk along the beach every day. (Difficult to get in the 5 clicks these days. It's darkening at 5 o'clock.) So, I'm looking at 45 minutes by car, or at least an hour and a quarter by train.

Self-justification now out of the way, this is my topic: the talking books I listen to going and coming, over the M5, up Fairford Road which becomes Stacey Street through Bankstown; becoming Rookwood Road through Chullora and then Joseph Street. I vroom through a host of suburbs I don't even want to learn the names of. The arse-end of Sydney town. I try to distract myself by listening to talking books. I have noticed that these do not all offer the same entertainment value.

Some talking books are eminently satisfying: a great tale written by a skillful author and voiced by someone with an unitrusive and melodious voice, rhythms and accent absolutely fitted to the setting and characterisation of the tale. But, when the actor's rendition doesn't hit the mark for me, I find myself ready to judge the writing as sub-(my)-standard. I don't really know if the writing is poor. I just know that I can't stand to listen to it. If I wanted to search for the truth, I should go & get the print version and see whether my poor opinion of the novel stands up. But by the time I have become so disillusioned with the performance of the text that I cannot listen to it any more, I also cannot make myself read it; I am so convinced that it's badly written. It has already caused me such pain.

A case in point: I had to stop listening to Jeffrey Eugenides "Middlesex" because the actor voicing the story used a Yiddish accent, instead of the Greek accent the characters would have had. The earlier generation of characters are immigrants from the Greek-speaking part of Turkey at the time, Smyrna (present day Izmir). I found it excruciating to listen to him, especially when he voiced the women characters. He sounded like a hairy-legged drag queen.

Another one I had to stop listening to was "The Unknown Terrorist" by Richard Flanagan. The

Cover of The Unknown Terrorist

protagonist, "the Doll" is an exotic dancer, and described as very beautiful by the narrator. Other characters admire her beauty. She is an anglo Westie, so I know what she would sound like. I hear Anglo Westies every day. And she wouldn't sound like a 150 kilo Lebanese panel beater. The actor voicing her got it very wrong. I don't expect Richard Flanagan will ever read my review of his talking book, but if you do, Richard, I'm sorry, that's the way it is. The talking book stinks. I will never know if your novel cuts it now because I can't bear to read it. It's been spoiled for me.

By comparison, I've just finished "People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks. Masterfully read. Easy to listen to. A host of different voices created by the reader: male & female; English that is Italian-accented, Anglo-Australian accented, American (East Coast)-Accented, Hebrew-accented, Arabic-accented. And all of the accents, it seemed to me (and I encounter many of these accents most days while I'm teaching English to my students) were perfectly natural and credible.