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Archived entries for English

July 11, 2006
In Brilliant, Clever, Editor's pick, Listen up, Original narration
§ Tagged Clara Hutt, English, Jill Tanner, mothers

India Knight’s My Life on a Plate read by Jill Tanner

More than a little over the top, Clara Hutt is dropping her 2 boys off this morning wearing her pajama bottoms (again) and wondering (again) why all the other mothers can arrive at school with perfectly starched blouses and expertly applied makiage. Not now, Darling, I’m Paaaarking,” and again, “I AM PAAARKING,” and again “Stop it, Charlie, don’t make me want to break your legs.”

There are so many things wrong with this picture that the fact that Clara doesn’t speak to her children like the mummies in books is, well, funny. Indeed, Charlie is six and already has a “vast panoply of hideous, faintly disturbing, terms of abuse.” “You tiresome retard” he says to his brother. Or to some hapless toddler on a play date: “God! You exasperating creature! What is it? Talk for God’s sake!! God. God. Bloody God!” She is, of course, to blame she thinks, while she watches Naomi The Perfect Mother and Crossing Guard doing her pelvic floor exercises. Hup two three four and hoooooolddd.

I think Clara is darling. In perfectly bad faith for the nought generation, Clara has all the elements of a mad Greek family member. But she is English, and thanks to Jill Tanner’s drawn out vowels and enthusiastic syntax, we are happy to relocate our tragic flaws.

Clara’s mother is, on the other hand, global.

January 29, 2006
In Clever, Editor's pick, Listen up, Original narration
§ Tagged British crime novel, crime, English, localized, Martha Grimes, Tim Curry

Martha Grimes read by Tim Curry: The Old Silent

Short cuts to well told endings of British crime novels don’t usually work. They leave out the localized, linguistic pulp of English thought. And it is thought not plot that makes a novel so very relentlessly English.

Tim Curry’s reading resonates with localized, idiomatic, parochial, inherited sense, regionality, territoriality.

Listen up. Tim Curry turns this abridgement into an exception.

March 14, 2005
In Brilliant, Clever, Editor's pick, Enchanting, Frank Muller, Listen up, Original narration
§ Tagged CIA, Cold War, counter-espionage, England, English, espionage, Frank Muller, John Le Carre, Philby, Soviet Union, spy, spycraft, tradecraft

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre read by FRANK MULLER. An Original.

How did Muller know that the text could sound like this? How could he make words talk like this? And yet he does. Muller turns them up and over and around so that each one cries out: Me, look! Listen to me! Hear me. And having been read in such a way, by such a voice, a word, a text, remains unspeakable by any other voice.
One listens half-crouched, head tilted, just a little, toward the machine, the voice, because it is inconceivable or almost inconceivable that this is English. For how can one even open one’s mouth when there is someone who makes English like this, makes English sound like this….

November 17, 2004
In Editor's pick, Good Mystery, Original narration
§ Tagged divorced, English, English law, P.D. James, Simon Prebble, woman lawyer

A Certain Justice by P.D. James read by Simon Prebble

It is rare to hear the barely conscious memories of a powerful woman reconnoitring the dimensions of a frustrated girlhood. The wooden, joyless father, the servile, fearful, nervous mother, the rules, the order, the manners, the placements, the positions, the positionings of the dinner table, extended to the smallest sensations of everyday life. The monstrous, unending oppression.

Is it an English oppression? Perhaps. There is the painful, unhappy education of a displaced intelligence, a displaced sex, a displaced class; the oblivion of a female among the ritual insensibilities of English law, the infinite isolation of a woman, divorced, middle-aged, groomed.

And there are the small contradictions of a rational woman, uncertain in the face of her irrationality, her daughter.

10 Years of Reviews

There are very few perfect beginnings to a story. Beginnings which move through images at the same rate as they move through text, rolling into a plot detectibly, sensibly, unhurriedly. A boy, for example, making the rounds on his bicycle, delivering the daily papers: ...At Colonel and Mrs Easterbrook's,A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

Sun Mar 07, 2004 Forty years ago, this would have been a Sandra Dee movie. Rock Hudson would have played the smart, rich, charming, befuddled and gorgeous groom; a french actress would have played the loopy, eternally foreign mother, and Chevalier would have played Teddy: irresponsible, felonious, a sexual misadventurer. AndManeater by Gigi Levangie Granger read by Uma Thurman

It is the story of a happy Captain of a sinking ship. It is the story of Chernobyl, afterwards. It is the story of provisional investigators, provisional policemen, provisional scientists who are provisionally accepted as the mad inhabitants of a zone officially uninhabited, in which no crime officially occurs. TheWolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith

Like listening to a brand new Stones album (if you're old enough to know what an album is...) If a video of you coveting your neighbor's wife captured the downing of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 would you rally to the Flag and turn it in? Night Fall is full ofNIGHT FALL by Nelson Demille Narrated by Scott Brick

Therefore, go forth, companion: when you find No highway more, no track, all being blind The way to go shall glimmer in the mind. Though you have conquered Earth and charted Sea And planned the courses of all Stars that be, Adventure on, more wonders are in Thee. Adventure on, for from the littlest clue HasNevil Shute No Highway read by Robin Bailey

When the big brained businessmen of Europe come home, they don't want brainy, brilliant, succulent text. They want fashionable, gossipy, obscenely stupid words popping out of fashionable, gossipy, obscenely stupid secretarial types. On heels. They want to come to America, for a night. And wake up inDrek, in pink: Wolves in Chic Clothing by Karasyov and Kargman, read by Gasteyer

At what point can one say that a man is a cheat? When he buys a house from you, when he tells you how to avoid paying income tax, when you help him misrepresent himself, when he helps you find a woman you can marry, when he callsGood Faith by Jane Smiley read by Richard Poe

One reads, and reads, and reads... and one forgets how good it feels to consider the world through the jolly eyes of a clever and forgiving judge. P.D. James, for example. Consider the small Anglican college of St Alselm's, faithful not only to God and Church but to the immemorialDeath in Holy Orders by P.D. James Narrated by Charles Keating

Alone. Another Abridged Morality Play by Lisa Gardner Sometimes one wonders whether books get written by stringing together the top keywords in Google. Sex-cops-beautiful wife-abused child-murder-guns-rich family-domestic violence-sharpshooter-alcoholic father-politics-doctors-baseball. (Never forget baseball.) Calculate the page rank, and you get: Good cop gets bad girl. Bad girl has good excuse. Good copAlone. Another Abridged Morality Play by Lisa Gardner

Dick Francis died in his home on the Cayman Islands. He was 89. A successful steeplechase jockey, Francis turned to writing after he retired from racing in 1957. He penned 42 novels, many of which featured racing as a theme. His books were translated into more than 20 languages, and inDick Francis 1921-2010

A jolly, fat, overcurious middle aged caterer, and her homicide detective husband are off to Catastrophus for a long delayed honeymoon. There they are told by Charon, the boat operator, that there there is no way on or off the island for two weeks. A series of demi-tragic catastrophesNemesis of the Dead by Francis Lloyd read by Gordon Griffin

Aristotle says that there are three sexes: men, women, and short women. This book is about that third sex: short, married, murderous women with happy helpful husbands and perky breasts. The kind who play tennis in the morning and spend the afternoon decorating the guest bathroom. The kind who think that wife #3 meansLong Time No See by Susan Isaacs read by Cristine Mcmurdo-Wallis

Bennie's office of girls has moved uptown, and become a good hair office. The Good Italian Catholic girl and the Giant California Blonde combine glib girly gall with smart search skills to reconstruct, redress and prosecute a 60 year old wrong. Mary (GIC-girl) is obsessed with an old case aboutLisa Scottoline read by Kate Burton:: Mary goes to Missoula

Nine times out of ten, if you've got a paranoid psychotic on the loose, his name is Raymond, he's mumbling something in Russian, and he's been hypnotized by his mother -- who is vicious and who controls the world. Allan Folsom is wonderful. So is Richard Condon. The extra bitThe Exile by Allan Folsom Read by Paul Michael

Women are trained to make excuses for bad behavior. Here are some for Stuart Woods' latest fictions: 1. Since James Bond, we all know that there are no married heroes of crime novels. Stone Barrington can't survive as Stone: cool, urban, sexual gourmand, in married bliss. The minute Stone married ArringtonSon of Stone: Drek II

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Archived entries for English

India Knight’s My Life on a Plate read by Jill Tanner

Martha Grimes read by Tim Curry: The Old Silent

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre read by FRANK MULLER. An Original.

A Certain Justice by P.D. James read by Simon Prebble

10 Years of Reviews

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