In case you hadn’t guessed after that tortuously detailed post a week ago about my efforts to download an audio book, I’m very fond of listening to audio books on my mp3 player - in fact, recently, I’ve been listening to more books than music. It makes the 20 minute drive from the train station to my house much more enjoyable, and I find it easier to get distracted at the gym when I’m listening to someone reading to me.
I’ve mostly been listening to cozy mysteries or funny books, so I got a bit of a surprise when I starting playing Minette Walter’s The Sculptress the other day. The Sculptress involves a rather gruesome murder involving dismemberment of bodies, and one of the early chapters is a recitation of the statement given to the police by the murderer. It’s a little disturbing to be trotting away on the elliptical machine listening to a detailed description of… well, dismemberment, and fountains of blood and so on, all narrated in the stolid monotone the reader has adopted for that particular character. I began to feel a little bit sick. It is, however, an excellent narration, with the most inventively different character voices I’ve heard - one smokes constantly (and you can hear the reader breathing in between sentences as if she’s drawing on a cigarette), and wheezes with a smoker’s laugh. But if someone matter-of-factly chatting in your ear about chopping up bodies strikes you as a bit distasteful, I’d recommend reading this book rather than listening to it. (It really is a good book. Just rather bloody.)
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