Written by: Sadie Jones

Read by: Dan Stevens

Published by: Random House Audiobooks

Price: £16.63

The lump in my throat announced itself when Lewis Aldridge was being questioned by the Coroner about the death of his mother. I don’t think it left throughout the rest of the book. If Sadie Jone’s beautifully written novel had been set today – Lewis’ tragic life would never have played out. He would have been healed, maybe a week or so after his mother’s death. And I’d like to think that people listen to children now. But I guess that’s why Sadie delivered a story set in the 1950’s...with no psychiatrists of today, and no social care..’else there wouldn’t be such a superbly moving story! (plus i’m an eternal optimist)

We meet Lewis as he returns home after a spell in prison in 1957 aged 19 – we’ve no clues as to why he was there – other than a cold relationship with his father and stepmother, and a silent drive to a refurbished church.

Sadie Jones takes us back then, to when Lewis was 10 – a year which changes him to a quiet, withdrawn little boy who becomes an angry alien to everyone.

Gilbert Aldridge, Lewis’ father had just returned from the war, and although he is cold and aloof with Lewis, we have sympathy with him for the trauma of his own past. Sadie Jones cleverly weaves Gilbert’s oppressive character into Lewis’ own fabric of despair. For, although Elizabeth, Lewis’ mother, is hardly mentioned between the two - her name rings throughout the whole story. Lewis is 10 years old when she dies.

Gilbert marries Alice within a year. She’s young and embarrassingly green. She hides her shortcomings in alcohol; which later leads to her having clothes ripping sex with Lewis at the top of their stairs. Gilbert had told Lewis to look after her, seeing the state she was in.

From the moment Gilbert returns to from the war, he’s determined to appear within the right social circles. He looks to the Carmichaels, the major neighbouring family for this. Lewis has known their daughters Kit and Tamsin, since they were very young.

Dan Stevens is able to bring an air of menace from the outset with Dicky Carmichaels’ character. It’s the more menacing because we see behind closed doors – and his violence towards his wife and daughter Kit. He never intends to touch Tamsin for a reason we never find out. The scenes echo those of Lewis’ own turmoil – and thus the two are brought together.

Kit Carmichaels is the only person who sees through Lewis’ black shroud of despair. She had always been wise beyond her years. In return, Lewis is the only person to see Kit’s own damaged soul. Their story entwines amidst the social hypocrisy..

I couldn't put this audio down - and found the ending bitterly sweet. Bitter, because it had finished. Sweet - because it left it's remains of brilliance with me.

Read by: Trevor White and Lorelei King

Published by: John Murray

Price: £10.49 from Audible

This audiobook reads like a script..a theatrical performance with Trevor White reading the ‘he said’s’ and ‘she said’s’ with a versatile candour.

There’s nothing uplifting about its choppy tale. Yes it reflects the city’s diversity; punctuating the dialogue of its varied characters with equally thought provoking historical snapshots read by Lorelei King.

Lorelei opens with a statement that sends me hunting for Google mobile; “On September 4, 1781 a group of 44 men, women and children who call themselves the Pobladores… I’m guessing that some of these snippets are fact – but some are fiction.

The distance this puts between reader and listener means that I never warmed to a single character.

This could, of course be the point; Old Man Joe, a homeless Chardonnay drinker who lives on the Venice boardwalk; Esperanza, a Mexican American post graduate who pretends to be an illegal immigrant so she can work as an abused maid; Amberton, a rich, handsome and successful movie star with a wife and children, who is charged with harassing his gay lover...

Another point may be that these are all characters that have come to Los Angeles to fulfil their dreams; they all want to become something they are not. And isn’t that a stereotype of LA? Every waitress and hairdresser is a would-be actor?

I found this a difficult book to listen to. Because of its disjointed feel, too many characters and themes..but i also had to listen to the bitter end. (which wasn’t a happy one!)

There..and I didn’t mention the ‘Million Little Pieces’ debacle once…(Doh! Dammit!)

Read by: Sian Thomas and Jeff Rawle

Published by: Random House Audiobooks

We’re introduced to Roza, a Serbian ex prostitute, at the beginning of the novel as she stands on a dark street in Archway near her derelict house. She’s not really waiting for a ‘client’, she’s having a laugh; a fact that made me immediately cynical of her ingenuous personality from the off. Her need to tell stories is compelling; i was constantly waiting for the ‘truth’.

The unfortunate who drives past Roza that night is the dull, shy Chris, a travelling salesman in his mid-forties and married to ‘the great white loaf’. He propositions Roza in a moment of madness, and begins a snowball of unrequited love.

I must add that my disquiet was further stirred by the smooth, Audrey Hepburn-esq voice of actress Sian Thomas, I was expecting a Serbian lilt. What’s more, the first-person narrative of Roza is fluent, very different from the broken English of her initial dialogue.

Jeff Rawles’ voice filled my car with the heavy tedium that was Chris. His was a voice that would be unremarkable say, in a short conversation in a pub over the advantages of blackcurrant in Guinness. But for the short time that he was mulling over his Balkan anomaly (we don’t even know if Roza is her real name) I sympathised with Chris and his bland ‘Englishness’.

Roza spends her days drinking coffee, smoking, and telling stories from her past to shock Chris. Her tale of sleeping with her father, her time at a hostess bar where she was abducted and gang-raped for days by a rogue client and his friend seemed specifically told to hurt Chris.

He’s a bland and dogged character in comparison, and he complains of her obliviousness to his feelings. Although it wasn’t the story of Roza’s upbringing as the daughter of a decorated partisan in Tito's Yugoslavia that intrigued, it was her telling of it. But, why does Roza need to read up on Yugoslavian history at the library?

Chris’s visits become less about the prospect of sex (her quote was £500 which he saves throughout the months in a brown envelope) and more about his infatuation. He wants to sit and listen to her tales, because he needs an excuse to be near her.

The question I put to my car stereo was; is she repelling him so that he never asks her for sex? And although Louis De Berniere’s artful tale kept me riveted, I’ve not drawn a conclusion from the ending; just a sense of pointless loss.

Nicely done.

Price from: $34.27

‘Flight’ is subtitled a ‘Quantum Fiction’ novel, of which the idea of there being an alternative universe has always intrigued me. “Geek!” I hear you mutter, but I loved Quantum Leap when it was running on TV, and the film, Sliding Doors with Gwenyth Paltrow; so when I stumbled across Vanna Bonta's 'Flight' profile on MySpace, I was intrigued.

Vanna Bonta is both a writer and a voice-over actor, and she narrates her novel brilliantly. Her characters are distinctive, thus brings alive the little asides and underlying humour that is Sandra, Mendle’s neurotic ex-girlfriend for example.

I’ll admit the beginning of the novel set me on edge a little; Bonta's language is very flamboyant and scientific. But, once you get used to the scientific jargon and beautiful imagery you realise that a lot of it is in fact food for thought. I became absorbed in the narrative and beautiful descriptions.

Aira Flight is a being that travels the stars. To begin with, she’s not made of any physical form as we know it, rather a light being of emotive thought. She’s travelling through space and time and we realise she’s searching for Jorian, the one she, ‘thought reaches’ to, her lover, the one she has a pure affinity with. Jorian is missing, absent from the stars. Absent from her.

She’s very close to her mini dragon, Onx, and both are tricked into the Z-Zone where they’re made to ‘forget’ who they are, what they are and what they know of the universe – they’re changed into organic beings and sent to earth!

We soon realise that we are hearing the words pounded out on the computer keyboard of award winning author, Mendle J. Orion. The tap tapping sound effects give the listener a solid transition between Mendle’s prose and what’s happening in his ‘real’ life. This is needed, as a lot of his novel has 'earthly' parallels and coincidences. There’s also a nice transition between chapters, with the ticking of a clock. I’m going to re-listen to Aira’s song I’m still not sure if I’m keen on it. I think I’d have preferred it if it were a poem she’d written.

Mendle is writing the story of Aira, his ‘Dream Lover’ (there was a little too much repetition of this song, I thought), a fictitious woman he’s longed for, who understands him. The thing with quantum entanglements is that the mysterious woman he’s writing about turns up, soaking wet, in his hotel bathroom during a science fiction convention. She has amnesia, and cannot immediately remember who she is, where she is or how she got there.

Aira is intriguing, and on meeting Mendle’s ex-girlfriend, Sandra, we realise how different she is. She highlights the vagaries of human interaction; the normally unobserved wrestling of ego. She is sometimes nauseatingly naïve, being ‘born’ into this world totally ignorant. But this Is in fact endearing, and we learn from her discoveries.

I was hooked on this story, the tale is ingenious. Although, i felt that by the end there were a couple of instances where the story could have ended before it actually did. The narrative became a little tired.

I’ll update this blog entry once I have info on a UK retailer for the audio. At the moment, you can buy from:

Audible.com, $34.27

Read by Trevor White 

Published by: John Murrays

Price: from £9.89

I winced a little as I popped this audiobook in my player. I’ve been meaning to listen to it for ages, and so my opinion of it had already been sullied by the furore that exploded just after its publication.

James Frey’s career seemed to be finished before it had begun after allegations emerged that he had inflated large portions of his ‘Memoir’, A Million Little Pieces. Oprah Winfrey had picked it for her book club, and very publicly admonished Frey, accusing him of betraying millions of readers in an interview on her live television show.

It’s harrowing and gut wrenching. If it had been 100% true (which, if you think about it, how could it be as Frey starts the book waking up from a coma on a plane!) it deserved the kudos and Winfrey’s primetime slot.

It’s about Freys’ time as a 23-year-old at death’s door due to severe (and I mean severe) alcohol and drug addiction. He had been using alcohol since he was 10 and drugs since he was 12 years-old.

It starts with what I assume is a Japanese proverb, and then I’m sitting bolt upright behind my steering wheel after listening to the Trevor White’s pleasant and ‘real’ sounding voice: ‘'I wake to the drone of an airplane engine and the feeling of something warm dripping down my chin. I lift my hand to feel my face. My four front teeth are gone. I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes are swollen nearly shut.”

From that plane ride, he’s met by his father and sobbing mother (who actually sobs her way through most of the book) and taken to the Hazelden Rehabilitation Centre in Minnesota . He feels a rage he names "the Fury" every time he talks to his parents, or has a craving.

The first anxiety I have with regard to the production of this audiobook is the author’s writing style. He seems to write as he speaks, and thus sometimes reels off a stream of consciousness, thought or feeling with word staccato word tumbling out into my VW in a heap. At times the relentless stream gave me road rage.

Frey has met some strong characters, of which White subtly defines and brings to life; Miles, a trumpet-playing judge, and Leonard a shady but strangely likable man who befriends Frey stand out amongst others. As does love interest Lily, (I rolled my eyes, but not as much as I wanted to or I’d have crashed the car) is a crack whore, who’d been beaten and abused. She sounds like a girl (some male readers have laughable women vocals!)

One gruesome scene that still makes me cringe is when he undergoes root-canal surgery to fix the damage done by jumping down a fire escape face first. He’d already had 41 stitches in his cheek without any form or pain killer because he’s in withdrawal. He then has the root-canal surgery without anaesthetic, squeezing two tennis balls until his fingernails break off. Ugh!

True or false…I couldn’t wait to get into my car to listen to this!

Read by Robert Glenister 

Published by Random House Audio

Price: £16.99 

This is a belter of a thriller from the off. The “Ghost” of the title, whose name we are never told, has been drafted in to finish off the memoirs of Adam Lang, a former British Labour prime minister after his predecessor, a long-standing political aide, is found drowned in an apparent suicide. Our ghost doesn’t know anything about politics, a trait he flags up when pitching for the job. He’s much better known for his celebrity biographies.

I laughed out loud when, going through the metal detectors to get to the interview he asks, “Who’re you expecting to bomb you? Random House?”

Rumours abound, of course, that The Ghost, is based on Tony Blair, his wife Cherie, and the former Prime Minister's loyal "gatekeeper" Anji Hunter. Robert Harris knows the Blairs really well, so I do wonder how much truth lies in the characters of Adam and Ruth Lang.

The thing that gripped me most about this thriller is the real questions it raised surrounding British politics. Who was it controlling our puppet prime minister; who persuaded him that it was a good idea to tuck his tail between his legs and cower down to American interests at the expense of our own? WHAT IF THIS BOOK WERE TRUE?

The ghostwriter (who narrates the story) and Adam Lang are ensconced in his publisher’s luxury compound on Martha’s Vineyard to rewrite the memoir started by his predecessor.

Adam Lang is a gifted communicator and former actor, a trait that Robert Glenister cleverly picks up on embellishing Lang’s teeth grating over familiarity with the ghost and his aide, Amelia Bly. His beautiful and bristly wife is intelligent (and very suspicious of Lang’s relationship with Bly) and extremely politically astute.

In the meantime, Richard Rycart, the former Foreign Secretary sacked by Lang and now working as a UN special envoy for humanitarian affairs, accuses his former boss of involvement in war crimes and for facilitating a CIA snatch and the subsequent torture of four British citizens.

The plot is steeped with eyebrow raising twists. I whole heartedly recommend this for both Harris’s clincher of a tale, and Glenister’s storytelling!

Read by Christopher Evan Welch

Published by Random House Audiobooks

Price: £16.99 Random House

Playing for Pizza is about failing American Footballer, Rick Dockery. It's set in Italy, and there’s not a lawyer, murder, kidnapping or Mafioso in the entire plot! Oddly enough, considering it's about American football, there are only a couple of cheerleaders!

Christopher Evan Welch opens with Rick, a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, in a hospital bed. His soft American twang fits with the story, making our Main Character come alive in the imagination. The whole book is easy on the ear; both with the tone and prose making me reach for disc after disc – even though I haven’t a clue about American Football! I’m actually shocked at how physically dangerous the game is!

Rick’s been severely injured in a tackle whilst snatching defeat from the jaws of victory to become a national “Goat”. Overnight he becomes the most hated player in Cleveland, with picketers outside the hospital (and a standing joke in Denver). He’s duly dropped by Browns, making a job on any other American team out of the question.

By fluke, Rick's agent finds him an opening with a struggling Italian NFL team, the Parma Panthers with an American coach, Sam Russo. Rick doesn’t even know where Parma is and finds the team consisting of local amateurs who have day jobs, and a couple of American pros. Worse still, gone is his ‘stupid thousand dollar’ salary, penthouse and top-of-the-range car. He has to learn to contend with a small flat in town and even smaller car. Even so, the Panthers’ fight hard to in the Italian Super Bowl for the chance to come away as champions, and beat the Bergamo Lions.

During his season in Italy, Rick negotiates a huge learning curve. This being the crux of the story, he realises that there is more to life than Football and a huge salary. He discovers opera, art, and architecture with Livvy Galloway, a frustrated college-student daughter of two warring parents in the middle of a divorce. He falls in love with all of it, especially Livvy.

I’m craving an Italian break now, due to the cultural destinations visited, the mouth watering food descriptions and the beautiful language. This audio read a little like a travel book with heart.

Read by: Simon Callow

Published by: Random House Audio

Price: £40; 3 Volumes, 12 CDs from Random House

I’ll certainly not look at the River Thames in the same way again. In Sacred River Peter Ackroyd (who also wrote London: A Biography) breathes new life into its waters and reveals it’s social, literary and geographical history. You may well yawn…but the Thames isn’t just a practical venue for the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. Historically, it's a place by which rulers built their cities, where merchants sold and traded, and where corporal punishment was dealt. It’s also the place where our sewage used to be expelled straight into (and where it still sometimes leaks) and on the banks of which there are over 50 Churches dedicated to Mary, Mother of God. (Akroyd ruminates around this, coming to the conclusion that it is because the River is surrounded by the myth of purity).

The Thames meanders through South East England, much like Ackroyd’s ponderings. I liked Simon Callow, he narrates with a confident, authoritative tone, relating Ackroyd’s musings like a gossiping friend.

I was left wondering how long it took Ackroyd to do his research, as the book is full of interesting facts. The Thames stretches 215 miles, passing through Hampton Court, Kingston, Teddington, Twickenham, Richmond, Dartford, Tilbury (Docks) and Gravesend before entering the Thames Estuary near Southend-on-Sea. Only 191 miles of the Thames are navigatable.

Now, after hearing much about the social history of the River, I’ve a morbid urge to visit places like Tilburn and Smithfield, where public executions where held. Apparently there were gallows at Greenwich and Deptford (Dead Man’s Dock).

I also now thank God for our Health and Safety Executive, as in 1794 they used to drink the water from the Thames as a ‘healing’ aid!! It was not recommended to cook with though, as it’d turn your vegetables black - go figure!

Published by: Simon & Schuster Ltd

Price: £9.99

Admittedly, I've rolled my eyes at the amount of American self help books there are on the bookshelves these days. I see their tanned and toothy grinned authors on the cover and think; tell me something I don’t know!

Rhonda Byrne’s Australian accent was a soothing and encouraging change to what I’ve heard before, and immediately caught my ear. There was no ranting or patronizing, and I could ‘hear’ her smiling with enthusiasm for what she was sharing…I was hooked!

The Secret is a good production. Rhonda explains her key message, attributing it to everyday life. Whether its money, romance or losing weight, she’s convinced following her simple steps will get you what you want.

I’m unconvinced that knowing The Secret can make you lose weight; calorific food will always be calorific in my eyes. And, echoing the trend, Rhonda didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t heard before. What she did do was fit a couple of puzzle pieces together for me to enable me to think differently. Positively!

Get past ‘catalogues to the universe’ and saying ‘thank you’ hundreds of times and what Rhonda is telling us is that our thoughts influence our mood, and if we’re optimistic and think good thoughts, positivity will manifest itself in our lives.

Rhonda qualifies her theories with sound bites from Philosophers and (mostly American) Life Coaches. Their sound bites are mildly repetitive, but give the CD the kick it needs to enforce the positive message. I particularly like Jack Cranson’s story about asking for $100,000, and virtually receiving every dollar! Chicken Soup for the Soul is still a hugely popular book.

Since listening to this audiobook I’m checking the doormat every evening (the postie never comes before I leave the house in the morning) for my £500,000 cheque (I’m not geedy).

And, if I haven’t convinced you to have a listen, part of The Secret’s success is due to the fact that it’s been recommended by Oprah Winfrey among other celebrities.

Published by: Hodder & Stoughton

Price: £29.99 Unabridged

Stephen King candidly (and brilliantly) reads his ‘long lost’ Bachman novel, stipulating at the beginning that it was a work that nearly didn’t get published at all. It was originally written in 1973, immediately before Carrie, and as King explains in his introduction, was put into a trunk and forgotten about.

Rather than being a crime/thriller novel solely about the kidnapping of a baby, robbery and murder; it focuses on one character, Clayton Blaisdell Jnr, (aka Blaze). Blaze is intellectually disabled , having undergone severe violent treatment from his father as a young boy. His dad threw him down the stairs three times (just to be sure) an act which left with a dent in his forehead the size of a tennis ball.

Throughout the novel, Blaze talks to and takes direction from his dead mentor George, who persuades him to move on from short cons in department stores to kidnapping the Gerard’s, (a super rich family) baby heir for a ransom. However - and here is the twist, George is dead. Stephen King delves in to the psyche of this simple soul, who at well over 6 foot is an unforgettable character. The investigation into the kidnapping soon flags up his profile to police – although they are suspicious that Blaze is not working alone.

I’ll admit that I found the back story far more interesting than the actual kidnapping and resulting chase. I’ll also admit that I need to re-listen to the parts where Blaze meets George as I’m left with a nagging ‘Sixth Sense’ versus ‘Fight Club’ suspicion that George never existed in the first place, although George’s death scene is pretty harrowing!

I couldn’t help but like Blaze – which I’m sure is King’s intention. Blaze is a clumsy, pathetic oaf who haphazardly falls into crime. As a child he uses his size and strength to protect victims of bullies, which is how he met his best friend Johnny at HH, the children’s home.

Blaze’s demise is stereotypical, if not uninventive – it reinforces the whole good over evil diatribe. That said, I did want to listen to the end, and I was slightly sorry for the misunderstood Blaze…