Audiobooks
Itās 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 CarrĆ©.
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 CarrƩ and narrated by... John le CarrƩ. 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 Ā©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
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THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT.Ģż BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE ±«Óćtv CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.
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IN TOUCH - Audiobooks
TX:Ģż 11.01.2022Ģż 2040-2100
PRESENTER:Ģż ĢżĢżĢżĢżĢżĢżĢż PETER WHITE
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PRODUCER:Ģż ĢżĢżĢżĢżĢżĢżĢżĢżĢż BETH HEMMINGS
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White
Good evening.Ģż Tonight, what I hope is going to be a feast for book lovers.Ģż This is the latest in our occasional series where we invite avid readers to share a favourite book.Ģż And if you think that sounds a lot like Radio 4ās A Good Read, a series I love, by the way, I make two points:Ģż first, weāre concentrating on audiobooks; second, weāve been using this format since the 1990s.Ģż In any case, whatās wrong with copying a good idea?
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So, to this weekās book choosers.Ģż First, Richard Lane, former press officer, long time freelance journalist and, from tomorrow, a wine educator with the Wine and Spirit Education Trust.Ģż And also, Fiona Dunn ā a musician, songwriter and currently training as a Methodist preacher.Ģż So, we have a preacher and a teacher.Ģż Two potential In Touch items in themselves as well perhaps.Ģż But today itās the books weāre looking at.
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Fiona, what have you chosen and why?
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Dunn
Iāve chosen Lost for Words by Stephanie Butland.Ģż Sheās an author I hadnāt heard of but I often look at the Kindle and Audible deals and I noticed this title ā Lost for Words ā and I thought that sounds intriguing.Ģż Itās about a woman in her mid-20s, she works in a bookshop and loves books, so itās a great title for a programme about books, as well, I thought.Ģż I also love it because weāre reading an audiobook about this, these bookshops can be accessible to us in the book, in a way that theyāre not in real life.Ģż We hear the story from the point of view of the main character, she tells us the story, and her life is very complicated.Ģż Sheās called Loveday, which is a Cornish name.Ģż 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.Ģż And that explains a lot about why she can be quite prickly.Ģż But her perspectives on various things change as the book goes on.Ģż And it just beautiful writing.Ģż The clip Iāve chosen is her talking about the type of customers she gets in the bookshop.
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Clip ā Lost for Words
Book inquiries tend to fall into four categories.Ģż The first is the misremembered/inaccurate: āIād like a copy of Any Which Way but Loose by William Shakespeare please.āĢż Could you mean Much Ado About Nothing?Ģż āNo, I donāt think so, itās a play.Ģż Could you look in the drama section?ā
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The second is the youāve got to be kidding me.Ģż āThere was a book I read in 1974 or ā75, it was a love story set in America, I think, or Australia.Ģż Do you have it?ā
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The third is book request of the week.Ģż āI heard this programme on Radio 4 and it mentioned a book about Pythagoras or maybe Prometheus.ā
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And the fourth is the sort of inquiry you can really get your teeth stuck into because it means tracking down something thatās hard to find.
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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.Ģż Because youāre 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.Ģż Itās always a bit tricky isnāt it.
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Letās bring in Richard because, as weāre going to find out, this book is very different from the one youāve chosen, so what did you make of Lost for Words?
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Lane
I just loved this book.Ģż I hadnāt come across Stephanie Butland before and neither Imogen Church.Ģż By the way, I do apologise, slightly croaky voice today but what a wonderful book what a gem of a book.Ģż 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.Ģż Beautiful reader.Ģż And I noticed, I looked her up, I noticed her Instagram handle is Imagenchurchgobshiteā¦
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Dunn
[Laughter] Brilliant.
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Lane
ā¦which is rather lovely but I digress.Ģż But the actual book, itās 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, Lovedayās boss.Ģż All the characters, there arenāt many characters in the book, but theyāre so beautifully etched.Ģż One of the really clever things about this book is thereās so much beauty in the book, thereās beauty in the writing, beauty in the other characters ā not all of them, thereās some flawed characters, obviously as well ā but Nathanās too good to be true, thereās ā must mention Rob, the strange character Rob, pushing flowers through the door of the bookshopā¦
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Dunn
Know heās been dumped ages ago, yeah.
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Lane
Even though heās been dumped by Loveday, thereās that whole thing going on.Ģż What I think works so well in this book is the brittleness that is Loveday, itās a sort of juxtaposition, isnāt 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.Ģż And it creates quite a lot of tension actually in each chapter of the book.
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White
We should also say itās very funny.Ģż When I was finishing this book at one oāclock this morning, I sat up and laughed out loud.Ģż She was describing a woman eccentric dresser and she said ā 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.Ģż
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Dunn
Yeah, itās brilliant, isnāt it?
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Lane
Yeah, just wonderful writing, wonderful images.Ģż And I think for the non-sighted, especially, us obviously, I think itās so vivid.Ģż And what I also love is the irony, as you mentioned Fiona, weāre 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 donāt listen to Imogen Church because Imogen is so amazing.
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Dunn
Itās also emotional, a good book will make you laugh and make you cry and this book certainly made me cry in places.Ģż 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.Ģż And she says of these memories ā they catch you, paper cuts across the heart.Ģż Beautiful.
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White
Iām going to have to stop you there because we wonāt get time for the other two books.
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Itās time for my choice.Ģż My choice is not so much one book, although I have chosen one, but itās a big hurrah for a crime fiction series, which, it seems to me, has gone under the radar.Ģż Iām sure real crime fiction afficionados know of John Harveyās Resnick books but his copper, his policeman, isnāt mentioned in the same breath as Rankinās Rebus, Rendallās Wexford, PD Jamesā Dalgleish, Morse ā I could go on.Ģż And I think that John Harvey should be.Ģż Itās hopeless to try and summarise a crime book without doling out loads of spoilers.Ģż So, Iām not even going to attempt that.Ģż Except to say that Charlie Resnickās beat is Nottingham, Cold in Hand, which is the one Iāve chosen, deals with youth gang warfare there, sadly still very much on the news agenda.Ģż But what really appeals to me about this series is Resnick himself and all the things that he isnāt and in a way what heās not is contained in this short extract.
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Clip ā Cold in Hand
For several minutes they ate in silence.Ģż Chet Baker faded into something more sprightly.Ģż Bob Brookmeyer and Jimmy Giuffre, playing Louisiana, an old favourite Resnick hadnāt listened to in years.Ģż The youngest of the cats was hovering hopefully beneath the table, rubbing its back from time to time against one of the legs.Ģż āThis is good,ā Resnick said, indicating his plate, āā¦donāt sound so surprised.āĢż āI didnāt meanā¦āĢż āYes, you did.āĢż He grinned.Ģż āIām sorry.āĢż āSo, you should be.ā
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White
Beautifully read there by Nick Bolton.
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So, Resnick is not a serial drinker, heās not a serial womaniser, heās in a stable relationship, heās a jazz lover, heās a cat lover.Ģż I just think Harveyās books are beautifully plotted, theyāre real, they have a sense of place and itās just a shame that only a handful of the 12 of the Resnick novels are on audiobook.Ģż So, Richard, what did you think, have I got John Harvey a new fan?
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Lane
I liked it to a degree.Ģż Iām not quite as enthusiastic as you, Peter.Ģż I mean itās not a genre I often immerse myself in, so thatās probably my fault.Ģż But I did enjoy it, the longer the book went on.Ģż And certainly Resnick, as youāve indicated, is low key and perhaps I wanted a bit more of Resnick at the beginning of the book.Ģż But then, as you said, this is a series, so if youāre reading the series by the time youāve got to this one, you know pretty well who Resnick is.Ģż I just felt, listening for the first time, I needed to get to know him a bit better.Ģż Itās interesting, because the female characters, I thought, were very much stronger, in a way, or certainly more clearly defined, perhaps, than Resnick.Ģż Thereās an ambiguity about Resnick.Ģż Iām not saying thatās a bad thing.Ģż But plot wise and structure wise and pace wise, yes, you do go through the gears.Ģż 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.
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White
Fiona, what about you?
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Dunn
Oh, I loved it. ĢżBut then I love thrillers and police books and things like that anyway.Ģż 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 ±«Óćtv 7 back then, itās Radio 4 Extra now. ĢżAnd they had a great theme tune that I remember it went [singing] ā 10 more wasted years ā because it was called wasted years and it was lovely.Ģż If Iād known then that this was a series, Iād have looked for them ages ago, so I was really happy when you recommended this book.
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White
Right, thatās my frustration, weāve had Rebus, weāve had Morse, weāve had Wexford, theyāve all had big TV series and I just think that this is in the same class.Ģż Itās the understatedness that I absolutely like about it.
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Dunn
Yes.Ģż Something horrible happens and I donāt think itās a spoiler to say that something horrible happens part way through this book and Resnick cries, heās not one of these, you know, stone male characters who doesnāt feel, like you get in some of these books, heās a normal person.Ģż
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White
Yeah.
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Lane
Iām sorry a bit of a tedious technical point but, again, this is one of the frustrations of audiobooks sometimes.Ģż The navigation on this book is not easy on Audible, you know the chapters skip when youāre listening donāt match the chapters in the book.Ģż If you do lose your place and you want to chapter flip back using the audio controls on the Audible app, theyāre out of sync with the actual chapters and thatās just something annoying.
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White
We found that when we were trying to find the right clip to play, how difficult it was.Ģż So, I think you make a very fair point.
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Richard, Iām going to stay with you for your own book, your own selection.Ģż Now youāve chosen a famous author, John Le CarrĆ© but not one of his spy novels.Ģż So, tell us more, tell us what youāve chosen and why.
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Lane
Iāve chosen The Pigeon Tunnel:Ģż Stories of my Life written and read, thank goodness ā Iāll explain why in a moment ā by John Le CarrĆ©.Ģż And I only started reading Le CarrĆ© four years ago and Iāve only read six or seven out of his 30 or 40 titles, so Iām not a Le CarrĆ© expert.Ģż But what I loved about this book, it was just a real treat because he has had a most extraordinary life.Ģż Itās not an ordinary autobiography that starts at the beginning and ends at the end, itās really a collection of short stories ā novellas, if you like ā of his life.Ģż Heās also incredibly honest, heās narrating this book at the age of 84, a couple of years before he dies, and he says: āI hope Iām remembering this correctlyā¦ā because itās what is pure memory, itās so difficult to know whether what youāre saying actually happened or not.Ģż So, heās upfront about that but he certainly hasnāt deliberately invented things.Ģż But also, this was the guy, remember, who ran away from school to get away from his father.Ģż He was courted and recruited into the intelligence service in the late ā50s, early 1960s.Ģż 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.Ģż Maybe 10 years later, when he became really, really famous again, with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.Ģż And thatās 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 weāve got to hear because there are four extraordinary consecutive chapters in the middle of his book where heās based in Beirut in the early 1980s with the Israel/Lebanon war going and heās based there because he wants to know what itās like, both from the Palestinian/Arabic perspective and he also crosses over into Israel for the Israel/Jewish perspective.Ģż And when heās in Beirut, he stays in the Commodore Hotel in Beirut where all the hacks and journalists and war people hang out.Ģż And as the clipās about to tell us, thereās one very important person in charge of the hotel.
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Clip ā The Pigeon Tunnel
Its most revered resident was an elderly parrot named Coco that ruled over the cellar bar with a rod of iron. ĢżAs 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 āHit the deck, dumb bastard, get your arse down now.āĢż 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.Ģż
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White
Itās such a great mental picture, isnāt it, you can actually hear it.Ģż Before you come back, Richard, I want to bring Fiona in, at this point, because I loved this book because Iād read a lot of John Le CarrĆ© and I donāt know whether you have Fiona, so I wondered what you made of it.
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Dunn
More Iāve heard dramas or watched dramas.Ģż 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.Ģż At the beginning I was struggling with it a bit but as it went on, I couldnāt put it down.Ģż And I do love that bit about the parrot, itās fantastic and itās interesting that all the clips weāve chosen are quite funny, I think, but itās amazingā¦
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White
Theyāre the ones that stay with you arenāt they.
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Dunn
I think either the funny ones or the really moving ones, yeah.Ģż I find it really interesting.Ģż But itās good in some ways in that you can dip in and out of it because theyāre short stories, as Richard said.Ģż But at the start I was struggling with that a bit, there wasnāt an impetus to go ā ooh whatās going to happen next ā because it would be a different story, if that makes sense.Ģż And itās actually made me want to get some of the other novels actually and read them.
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White
Well, thatās the idea of this programme or part of the idea of this programme.Ģż Richard, I loved it because Iāve read quite a lot ā Iāve probably read actually more than you have ā and it unfolds so many things in the novels that I didnāt understand.Ģż But thereās an interesting thing about Le CarrĆ© which is that it seems he almost canāt not write like a Russian doll, even when heās writing fact, you never know quite what youāre reading, you never know quite where itās going to go.Ģż And thereās always a plot within a plot within a plot, even when heās talking about his own life.Ģż Did you find that?
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Lane
Absolutely, Peter, because I read your book and I read Fionaās 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 CarrĆ© is an exquisite writer, his concision is unbelievable.Ģż But itās dense, Le CarrĆ©ās writing is dense.Ģż So, itās easy to miss stuff, isnāt it?Ģż What I really, really love about it most of all is itās a very human book, he doesnāt 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.Ģż And thereās this real kind of, I suppose, pathos with Le CarrĆ©, thereās integrity.Ģż And I think itās 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.
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White
So, the idea of the author reading the book, that works for you?
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Lane
In this case.
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White
Yeah, yeah.Ģż And you Fiona?
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Dunn
Yes, it works definitely for me ā John Le CarrĆ© reading it ā but I wouldnāt say that means authors should always read their own book because some authors are better at that than others.
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White
Iāll 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 ā should you read your own book ā and actually he was in real doubt about whether he should or whether he shouldnāt.Ģż In this one ā The Pigeon Tunnel ā I think heās much more convincing and it is his age, I think, and the gravitas in the voice that really makes it work.
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So, thatās it, we have been talking about The Pigeon Tunnel by John Le CarrĆ©, weāve been talking about Cold in Hand by John Harvey and weāve been talking about Lost for Words by Stephanie Butland.Ģż
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And thatās it for today.Ģż Many thanks to Fiona ā Fiona Dunn ā and Richard Lane for steering us ā me at least ā to books that I might never have read otherwise.Ģż And we welcome your picks of audiobooks that youāve particularly enjoyed from whatever source you choose.Ģż You can email intouch@bbc.co.uk or you can go to our website bbc.co.uk/intouch from where you can download tonightās and previous editions of the programme and get links to the three books that weāve mentioned.
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From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio managers Mike Smith and Jonathan Esp, goodbye.
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- Tue 11 Jan 2022 20:40±«Óćtv Radio 4
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