Arminta Wallacereviews a selection of audio books
Man in the Dark
By Paul Auster, read by the author.
Faber Faber, unabridged, four CDs, five hours, £15.99
This playful new novel opens with a 70-something man lying awake in the dark in Vermont, telling himself stories to pass the time. In a parallel universe, however, a man named Brick wakes up in a dangerous dream: he has been propelled without explanation into the middle of a 21st-century American civil war. As the night drags on Auster's avuncular anti-hero is joined by his insomniac grand-daughter, who wants to know all about her late grandmother - which is one story he doesn't want to tell. Meanwhile, the hero of his civil war story has been sent to kill him. Auster's skill in juggling themes of conflict, contemporary American politics and elements of the family saga while hanging on to his sense of humour adds up to a breathtaking balancing act. And guess what? He's a damn fine reader into the bargain.
After Dark
Haruki Murakami, read by Judy Bennett.
Hodder Stoughton, unabridged, five CDs, six hours, £19.99
What Auster can do for New York, Murakami can do for Tokyo - and then some. A girl sits reading in an all-night diner. A group of jazz musicians get together for rehearsal. In a love-hotel, a Chinese prostitute is beaten by a client - who calmly returns to his office and does sit-ups while listening to Scarlatti on his CD player. Music always features in Haruki Murakami's contrapuntal investigations of contemporary Japanese life, but this novel actually is music - a kind of literary tone poem which celebrates a Tokyo night in all its dark, sleek, weird ordinariness. That's two brilliant night books in one day, folks.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
By Robert M Pirsig, read by Michael Kramer
Craftsman Audio, 11 CDs, 13 hours, £39.99
Despite its skittish title this 1970s cult bestseller is a piece of full-on, serious philosophising, written in the form of a travel journal/road movie in which a damaged father and his troubled teenage son journey across the US on a motorbike. Pirsig is 80 this year, but his forensic examination of the nature of something he calls "quality" - and his consequent take on the relationship between mind and matter - seems more relevant than ever in the face of our current global crisis of cultural conscience. A honey-voiced Michael Kramer reads at a leisurely pace, there's classy original music by Leigh Odlin and it all comes in a practical box-set format. Get ready for lots of Aristotle and Kant, and a potentially life-changing listen.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
By Stieg Larsson, read by Martin Wenner
Quercus, six CDs, seven hours, £16.99
Four years ago, an unknown Swedish journalist delivered three manuscripts to a publisher in Stockholm. Steig Larsson died a few months before the first of the books came out - but that didn't stop his trilogy from sweeping across Europe, collecting awards, selling more than five million copies and winning a devoted readership in more than 30 countries in the process. On the evidence of this first volume Larsson's untimely death has robbed crime fiction of a serious superstar. It's a cracking story whose surface warmth conceals a coolly analytical approach, blending a keen sense of social justice with an equally sharp sense of self-deprecating humour. Bring on the next volume, please, and soon.
Troubles
By JG Farrell, read by Sean Barrett
CSA Word, four CDs, five hours, £14.46
Like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Troubles is the first part of a trilogy which dramatises the consequences of a particular milieu and its associated cosy socio-political assumptions. This time, though, it's British colonial rule which is on trial. The book opens with an English major, Brendan Archer, arriving in a crumbling hotel in Co Wicklow, where he may or may not - he's not entirely sure - be engaged to the daughter of the house. There follows a sharp, yet warmly affectionate Big House satire of the kind which fans of Molly Keane and Clare Boylan will adore.
The Woman In White
By Wilkie Collins, read by Allan Corduner and a full cast
Naxos, five CDs, six hours, £19.99
Everyone who reads thrillers knows The Woman in White is the granddaddy - or grandmammy? - of the genre; so it's good to get up close and personal with this gothic ghost story, which was first published in 1860. The plot has been immortalised by crime writers ever since - innocent young woman, cash-strapped husband, dastardly plot, last-minute rescue - but Collins ratchets up the tension by presenting the story through the eyes of a series of more or less reliable narrators. A marvellous slice of escapist fantasy.