The Cutting Room

The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh

Read by Robert Carlyle

Published by Chivers Audio Books (an imprint of BBC Audio)

£45.95 excl VAT ( www.bbcaudiobooks.com )

Robert Carlyle’s lilting tones are the making of this audio book. It was as if the book were written for him to read. I’m sure I’ve just made a faux pas, praising the narrator before the author, but Rilke, a disheveled and promiscuous auctioneer, is brought to life by this brilliant actor.

Welsh’s dark and atmospheric thriller is s et in contemporary Glasgow. ‘The Cutting Room’ is about Rilke’s discovery of pornographic, possibly snuff, photos while doing a house clearance for a frail old woman who has just lost her brother. Off set by his wheeling and dealing with Rose the auction house owner he is drawn deeper into the raw and shady world of porn.

A sense of encroaching time pervades this novel. From the pressing need to get the treasures out of the house and to the auction, to the need to find what really happened to the girl in the photos, even to Rilke’s animalist need for a quick fuck. The prose is littered with literary quotes, “The death of a beautiful woman is the most beautiful thing in the world” (Edgar Allen Poe), which enriches it with an almost suffocating atmosphere.

Welsh has an gift for story telling. Her descriptive writing engages and thus draws you in to the story – and most importantly, Rilke’s character.

Rilke is not a pleasant man. Promiscuous, violent and cunning, not someone you’d introduce to your mother. But the honesty in his vulgarity and his unrestraint make him a compelling character. (Likeable doesn’t seem the right word).

Welsh’s lyrical and sophisticated writing colours characters like McKindless, the dead man whose attic Rilke was clearing of valuable erotic books and miscellaneous. I wanted to find our more about Leslie, the cross dressing, drug dealing hard man and Derek, the 24ish Adonis who works in a porn shop and with whom Rilke becomes infatuated.

Every now and then I’ll stumble on an audio that grips me in such a way I can forget where I’m driving, and when I have to leave the car, I actually can’t wait to jump back in again – this was one of those audios.