Audiobooks
It’s all about the audiobooks! We discuss Cold In Hand by John Harvey, Lost for Words by Stephanie Butland and The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carré.
We're discussing three audiobooks: Cold In Hand by John Harvey and narrated by Nick Boulton, Lost for Words by Stephanie Butland and narrated by Imogen Church and The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carré and narrated by... John le Carré. Peter reviews the stories and themes and, most importantly, the narration with guests Richard Land and Fiona Dunn.
Presenter: Peter White
Producer Beth Hemmings
Website Image Description: the image shows a stack of multicoloured books on a wooden table. Next to them is a pair of large headphones, with a wire leading into the spine of the book on top. Representing the conversion of physical books into an audiobook format.
Links to audiobooks discussed in the show:
Lost for Words: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Lost-for-Words-Audiobook/B06XC63H14?ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_&pf_rd_p=d5008f37-07b0-4d76-b44d-2b41ca41066e&pf_rd_r=XGHDR8RSQVC5FJ5JA55T
Cold In Hand: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Cold-in-Hand-Audiobook/B004FTUG6K?ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_&pf_rd_p=d5008f37-07b0-4d76-b44d-2b41ca41066e&pf_rd_r=XGHDR8RSQVC5FJ5JA55T
The Pigeon Tunnel: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Pigeon-Tunnel-Audiobook/B016E8URPE?ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_&pf_rd_p=d5008f37-07b0-4d76-b44d-2b41ca41066e&pf_rd_r=XGHDR8RSQVC5FJ5JA55T
Audio credits:
Lost for Words ©2017 Stephanie Butland (P)2017 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd.
Cold in Hand, used by permission from W.F. Howes Ltd.
The Pigeon Tunnel, used by permission from Penguin Random House Ltd.
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In Touch transcript: 11/01/22
Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4
THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE ѿý CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.
IN TOUCH - Audiobooks
TX: 11.01.2022 2040-2100
PRESENTER: PETER WHITE
PRODUCER: BETH HEMMINGS
White
Good evening. Tonight, what I hope is going to be a feast for book lovers. This is the latest in our occasional series where we invite avid readers to share a favourite book. And if you think that sounds a lot like Radio 4’s A Good Read, a series I love, by the way, I make two points: first, we’re concentrating on audiobooks; second, we’ve been using this format since the 1990s. In any case, what’s wrong with copying a good idea?
So, to this week’s book choosers. First, Richard Lane, former press officer, long time freelance journalist and, from tomorrow, a wine educator with the Wine and Spirit Education Trust. And also, Fiona Dunn – a musician, songwriter and currently training as a Methodist preacher. So, we have a preacher and a teacher. Two potential In Touch items in themselves as well perhaps. But today it’s the books we’re looking at.
Fiona, what have you chosen and why?
Dunn
I’ve chosen Lost for Words by Stephanie Butland. She’s an author I hadn’t heard of but I often look at the Kindle and Audible deals and I noticed this title – Lost for Words – and I thought that sounds intriguing. It’s about a woman in her mid-20s, she works in a bookshop and loves books, so it’s a great title for a programme about books, as well, I thought. I also love it because we’re reading an audiobook about this, these bookshops can be accessible to us in the book, in a way that they’re not in real life. We hear the story from the point of view of the main character, she tells us the story, and her life is very complicated. She’s called Loveday, which is a Cornish name. And gradually, as the book goes on, we find out that she ended up in care and, as the book goes on, we find out why that was. And that explains a lot about why she can be quite prickly. But her perspectives on various things change as the book goes on. And it just beautiful writing. The clip I’ve chosen is her talking about the type of customers she gets in the bookshop.
Clip – Lost for Words
Book inquiries tend to fall into four categories. The first is the misremembered/inaccurate: “I’d like a copy of Any Which Way but Loose by William Shakespeare please.” Could you mean Much Ado About Nothing? “No, I don’t think so, it’s a play. Could you look in the drama section?”
The second is the you’ve got to be kidding me. “There was a book I read in 1974 or ’75, it was a love story set in America, I think, or Australia. Do you have it?”
The third is book request of the week. “I heard this programme on Radio 4 and it mentioned a book about Pythagoras or maybe Prometheus.”
And the fourth is the sort of inquiry you can really get your teeth stuck into because it means tracking down something that’s hard to find.
White
The great thing about this book, as you said Fiona, is that it absolutely speaks to book lovers but there is also this question of the kind of secret that gradually becomes unwound as the book goes on. Because you’re now walking the tightrope that we always walk with this kind of programme, which is how much do we tell people and how much do we not give away. It’s always a bit tricky isn’t it.
Let’s bring in Richard because, as we’re going to find out, this book is very different from the one you’ve chosen, so what did you make of Lost for Words?
Lane
I just loved this book. I hadn’t come across Stephanie Butland before and neither Imogen Church. By the way, I do apologise, slightly croaky voice today but what a wonderful book what a gem of a book. Sometimes when I think about the narration for an audiobook, I kind of dread sometimes an actor taking on the role and sort of enacting it but with Imogen Church, I felt like listening to a film starring Imogen Church as Loveday. Beautiful reader. And I noticed, I looked her up, I noticed her Instagram handle is Imagenchurchgobshite…
Dunn
[Laughter] Brilliant.
Lane
…which is rather lovely but I digress. But the actual book, it’s not just a fluffy story about a lovely sounding second-hand bookshop in York with its large armchair blocking the fire escape and its remarkable characters like Archie the owner, Loveday’s boss. All the characters, there aren’t many characters in the book, but they’re so beautifully etched. One of the really clever things about this book is there’s so much beauty in the book, there’s beauty in the writing, beauty in the other characters – not all of them, there’s some flawed characters, obviously as well – but Nathan’s too good to be true, there’s – must mention Rob, the strange character Rob, pushing flowers through the door of the bookshop…
Dunn
Know he’s been dumped ages ago, yeah.
Lane
Even though he’s been dumped by Loveday, there’s that whole thing going on. What I think works so well in this book is the brittleness that is Loveday, it’s a sort of juxtaposition, isn’t it, against the kind of fuzziness and the loveliness of Archie and the kind of romantic sound of this second-hand bookshop in York and I think that makes it work really well. And it creates quite a lot of tension actually in each chapter of the book.
White
We should also say it’s very funny. When I was finishing this book at one o’clock this morning, I sat up and laughed out loud. She was describing a woman eccentric dresser and she said – she came in, she was wearing DMs with a 1980s shot silk dress with a tear in one sleeve, sort of Miss Havisham doing the gardening.
Dunn
Yeah, it’s brilliant, isn’t it?
Lane
Yeah, just wonderful writing, wonderful images. And I think for the non-sighted, especially, us obviously, I think it’s so vivid. And what I also love is the irony, as you mentioned Fiona, we’re talking about a bookshop and physical books, the feel and smell of books and here we are listening to it as an audiobook and I feel sorry for people who read this book, who don’t listen to Imogen Church because Imogen is so amazing.
Dunn
It’s also emotional, a good book will make you laugh and make you cry and this book certainly made me cry in places. I mean there are places where she talks about, for example, a poetry book that brings back memories of her childhood before everything went wrong. And she says of these memories – they catch you, paper cuts across the heart. Beautiful.
White
I’m going to have to stop you there because we won’t get time for the other two books.
It’s time for my choice. My choice is not so much one book, although I have chosen one, but it’s a big hurrah for a crime fiction series, which, it seems to me, has gone under the radar. I’m sure real crime fiction afficionados know of John Harvey’s Resnick books but his copper, his policeman, isn’t mentioned in the same breath as Rankin’s Rebus, Rendall’s Wexford, PD James’ Dalgleish, Morse – I could go on. And I think that John Harvey should be. It’s hopeless to try and summarise a crime book without doling out loads of spoilers. So, I’m not even going to attempt that. Except to say that Charlie Resnick’s beat is Nottingham, Cold in Hand, which is the one I’ve chosen, deals with youth gang warfare there, sadly still very much on the news agenda. But what really appeals to me about this series is Resnick himself and all the things that he isn’t and in a way what he’s not is contained in this short extract.
Clip – Cold in Hand
For several minutes they ate in silence. Chet Baker faded into something more sprightly. Bob Brookmeyer and Jimmy Giuffre, playing Louisiana, an old favourite Resnick hadn’t listened to in years. The youngest of the cats was hovering hopefully beneath the table, rubbing its back from time to time against one of the legs. “This is good,” Resnick said, indicating his plate, “…don’t sound so surprised.” “I didn’t mean…” “Yes, you did.” He grinned. “I’m sorry.” “So, you should be.”
White
Beautifully read there by Nick Bolton.
So, Resnick is not a serial drinker, he’s not a serial womaniser, he’s in a stable relationship, he’s a jazz lover, he’s a cat lover. I just think Harvey’s books are beautifully plotted, they’re real, they have a sense of place and it’s just a shame that only a handful of the 12 of the Resnick novels are on audiobook. So, Richard, what did you think, have I got John Harvey a new fan?
Lane
I liked it to a degree. I’m not quite as enthusiastic as you, Peter. I mean it’s not a genre I often immerse myself in, so that’s probably my fault. But I did enjoy it, the longer the book went on. And certainly Resnick, as you’ve indicated, is low key and perhaps I wanted a bit more of Resnick at the beginning of the book. But then, as you said, this is a series, so if you’re reading the series by the time you’ve got to this one, you know pretty well who Resnick is. I just felt, listening for the first time, I needed to get to know him a bit better. It’s interesting, because the female characters, I thought, were very much stronger, in a way, or certainly more clearly defined, perhaps, than Resnick. There’s an ambiguity about Resnick. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But plot wise and structure wise and pace wise, yes, you do go through the gears. I just felt, initially, as though I was watching a very long or listening to a very long episode of Line of Duty to begin with but overall, I did enjoy it, but it took me a little while to get going.
White
Fiona, what about you?
Dunn
Oh, I loved it. But then I love thrillers and police books and things like that anyway. And it turned out I had actually heard another book from this series on the radio a few years ago, they played it on, I think, it was called ѿý 7 back then, it’s Radio 4 Extra now. And they had a great theme tune that I remember it went [singing] – 10 more wasted years – because it was called wasted years and it was lovely. If I’d known then that this was a series, I’d have looked for them ages ago, so I was really happy when you recommended this book.
White
Right, that’s my frustration, we’ve had Rebus, we’ve had Morse, we’ve had Wexford, they’ve all had big TV series and I just think that this is in the same class. It’s the understatedness that I absolutely like about it.
Dunn
Yes. Something horrible happens and I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that something horrible happens part way through this book and Resnick cries, he’s not one of these, you know, stone male characters who doesn’t feel, like you get in some of these books, he’s a normal person.
White
Yeah.
Lane
I’m sorry a bit of a tedious technical point but, again, this is one of the frustrations of audiobooks sometimes. The navigation on this book is not easy on Audible, you know the chapters skip when you’re listening don’t match the chapters in the book. If you do lose your place and you want to chapter flip back using the audio controls on the Audible app, they’re out of sync with the actual chapters and that’s just something annoying.
White
We found that when we were trying to find the right clip to play, how difficult it was. So, I think you make a very fair point.
Richard, I’m going to stay with you for your own book, your own selection. Now you’ve chosen a famous author, John Le Carré but not one of his spy novels. So, tell us more, tell us what you’ve chosen and why.
Lane
I’ve chosen The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories of my Life written and read, thank goodness – I’ll explain why in a moment – by John Le Carré. And I only started reading Le Carré four years ago and I’ve only read six or seven out of his 30 or 40 titles, so I’m not a Le Carré expert. But what I loved about this book, it was just a real treat because he has had a most extraordinary life. It’s not an ordinary autobiography that starts at the beginning and ends at the end, it’s really a collection of short stories – novellas, if you like – of his life. He’s also incredibly honest, he’s narrating this book at the age of 84, a couple of years before he dies, and he says: “I hope I’m remembering this correctly…” because it’s what is pure memory, it’s so difficult to know whether what you’re saying actually happened or not. So, he’s upfront about that but he certainly hasn’t deliberately invented things. But also, this was the guy, remember, who ran away from school to get away from his father. He was courted and recruited into the intelligence service in the late ‘50s, early 1960s. He then left the intelligent service to become an author and became a successful author because of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold 1963, so he became successful quite early on. Maybe 10 years later, when he became really, really famous again, with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. And that’s the turning point in his life actually, from that point on he became an adventurer which often took him into war zones and all the rest of it and this links to the little clip we’ve got to hear because there are four extraordinary consecutive chapters in the middle of his book where he’s based in Beirut in the early 1980s with the Israel/Lebanon war going and he’s based there because he wants to know what it’s like, both from the Palestinian/Arabic perspective and he also crosses over into Israel for the Israel/Jewish perspective. And when he’s in Beirut, he stays in the Commodore Hotel in Beirut where all the hacks and journalists and war people hang out. And as the clip’s about to tell us, there’s one very important person in charge of the hotel.
Clip – The Pigeon Tunnel
Its most revered resident was an elderly parrot named Coco that ruled over the cellar bar with a rod of iron. As the techniques of urban warfare became ever more sophisticated, from semi-automatic to rocket propelled from light to medium or whatever the correct vocabulary is, so Coco updated his repertoire of battle sounds to a point where the uninitiated guest, grazing at the bar, would be roused by the whoosh of an incoming missile and a shriek of “Hit the deck, dumb bastard, get your arse down now.” And nothing better pleased the war weary hacks returning from another hellish day in paradise than the sight of some poor neophyte disappearing under a table while they go on sipping nonchalantly at their mahogany whiskies.
White
It’s such a great mental picture, isn’t it, you can actually hear it. Before you come back, Richard, I want to bring Fiona in, at this point, because I loved this book because I’d read a lot of John Le Carré and I don’t know whether you have Fiona, so I wondered what you made of it.
Dunn
More I’ve heard dramas or watched dramas. There was a Radio 4 series of all the Smiley books, which I remember getting gripped by and things like The Night Manager were on the telly. At the beginning I was struggling with it a bit but as it went on, I couldn’t put it down. And I do love that bit about the parrot, it’s fantastic and it’s interesting that all the clips we’ve chosen are quite funny, I think, but it’s amazing…
White
They’re the ones that stay with you aren’t they.
Dunn
I think either the funny ones or the really moving ones, yeah. I find it really interesting. But it’s good in some ways in that you can dip in and out of it because they’re short stories, as Richard said. But at the start I was struggling with that a bit, there wasn’t an impetus to go – ooh what’s going to happen next – because it would be a different story, if that makes sense. And it’s actually made me want to get some of the other novels actually and read them.
White
Well, that’s the idea of this programme or part of the idea of this programme. Richard, I loved it because I’ve read quite a lot – I’ve probably read actually more than you have – and it unfolds so many things in the novels that I didn’t understand. But there’s an interesting thing about Le Carré which is that it seems he almost can’t not write like a Russian doll, even when he’s writing fact, you never know quite what you’re reading, you never know quite where it’s going to go. And there’s always a plot within a plot within a plot, even when he’s talking about his own life. Did you find that?
Lane
Absolutely, Peter, because I read your book and I read Fiona’s book, more recently, because I thought I knew this book, so I quickly re-read this book to remind myself and I thought I was almost reading another book because Le Carré is an exquisite writer, his concision is unbelievable. But it’s dense, Le Carré’s writing is dense. So, it’s easy to miss stuff, isn’t it? What I really, really love about it most of all is it’s a very human book, he doesn’t set out to be some sort of huge personality or celebrity, he talks about his failings as a father and as a husband and how difficult he can be and his memory and all the rest of it but what he is in search of, all the time, is truth. And there’s this real kind of, I suppose, pathos with Le Carré, there’s integrity. And I think it’s so important that we are listening to his book read by him because his beautiful elderly voice gives an extra note of integrity, not that it really needed it.
White
So, the idea of the author reading the book, that works for you?
Lane
In this case.
White
Yeah, yeah. And you Fiona?
Dunn
Yes, it works definitely for me – John Le Carré reading it – but I wouldn’t say that means authors should always read their own book because some authors are better at that than others.
White
I’ll tell you a funny story about this very quickly because we almost have to end but actually about 20 years ago, I think it must have been, I went to interview him about exactly this point – should you read your own book – and actually he was in real doubt about whether he should or whether he shouldn’t. In this one – The Pigeon Tunnel – I think he’s much more convincing and it is his age, I think, and the gravitas in the voice that really makes it work.
So, that’s it, we have been talking about The Pigeon Tunnel by John Le Carré, we’ve been talking about Cold in Hand by John Harvey and we’ve been talking about Lost for Words by Stephanie Butland.
And that’s it for today. Many thanks to Fiona – Fiona Dunn – and Richard Lane for steering us – me at least – to books that I might never have read otherwise. And we welcome your picks of audiobooks that you’ve particularly enjoyed from whatever source you choose. You can email intouch@bbc.co.uk or you can go to our website bbc.co.uk/intouch from where you can download tonight’s and previous editions of the programme and get links to the three books that we’ve mentioned.
From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio managers Mike Smith and Jonathan Esp, goodbye.
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- Tue 11 Jan 2022 20:40ѿý Radio 4
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