READY PLAYER ONE

by Ernest Cline

345 pages, Arrow

(This review is of the audio version, read by Wil Wheaton. Yes, that one)

Review by Pat Black

Ready Player One. This is the dream we all dream of.

The phone goes: it’s Spielberg. You assume it’s a joke, a prank played by your pals. But after some pre-watershed-sitcom misunderstandings in which he chuckles at your growing consternation, you find out that no, it’s actually Spielberg.

He wants to adapt your book into a movie. Shall we draw up some paperwork? Sign here to become a total winner. Your official title is now Sir Victor de Jacquepotte. No, don’t bother going back to work on Monday. We’ll send a limo round to collect your P45.

This actually happened to Ernest Cline with Ready Player One. It’ll be a movie soon, directed by the most famous film-maker who ever lived. Ooh, you jammy bugger. Talk about finding the Grail.

Set in 2044, the novel tells the story of a teenage shut-in called Wade Watts who spends his spare time in a fully-immersive virtual reality world called the Oasis. Provided you’ve got the equipment, the Oasis is free to access. You can go to school in it, play games in it, “interact” with others in it, and do pretty much whatever you want in it, across countless virtual galaxies, in any realistic or fantasy setting you could wish for. You can create worlds; you can fight people; you can make love. You can hunt dragons, complete quests, direct space battles, become a kung fu master or a sports hero – anything you like, any way you like it. It even has a pseudo economy, a virtual currency system using experience points – basically a personal scoreboard after you complete games, pick up artefacts, pass exams, or whatever.

You control your 3D avatar with haptic gloves and visors. Some sensory information is added to whatever you can see, depending on how up-to-date your set-up is.

All of this happens while you are sat in your house, oblivious to the real world.

The inventor of the Oasis is a tech geek/punk baron called James Halliday, a composite of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and that guy who wrote Chuckie Egg. When Halliday dies, a great game begins – the search for the ultimate Easter egg, hidden somewhere in the Oasis, which will grant the finder Halliday’s entire fortune – hundreds of billions of dollars.

People who look for the Egg are called Gunters. These are the amateurs, and there are millions of them. But with all that lolly on offer, you can bet that corporate interests start getting involved. These are represented by the boo-hiss baddies of IOI industries, a tech firm with designs on control of the Oasis, monetising it, and doing all that bad old capitalist stuff.

People flock to the Oasis because the real world is shit. Cline posits a future where the Great Recession never ended. As time ticks on, this moves from an outrageous prospect to prescience. This is a vision of the western world in irrevocable decline. The environment is a nightmare, junk food is a normal diet, public services are almost non-existent, crime is endemic and… let’s just stick a big “dystopia” label on it.

Wade – who calls himself Parzival in the Oasis, a nod to his Arthurian quest for Halliday’s Egg – has one friend in the virtual world, a fellow 1980s geek and video game nerd called Aech (pronounced as the letter H), who you can be certain is not what they seem.

Parzival is obsessed with pop culture from the decade that Halliday became a teenager and got interested in computing. As a result of painstaking research, Wade/Parzival succeeds where millions of others have failed over the years, and uncovers a clue which will help him find one of three keys which he needs to claim the Egg.

Along with Aech, Parzival teams up with other virtual partners, including the geek Dream Girl trope, Art3mis, as well as two Japanese brothers, Daito and Shoto. With the villainous IOI agents taking a murderous interest in his activities, a classic treasure hunt is on.

This involves solving riddles and playing classic video games such as Joust and Pac-Man, but also includes Dungeons and Dragons modules, the back catalogue of Rush, the movie War Games, primeval text-based eight-bit adventure games, and many other pre-internet geeky touchstones.

I had a wee problem with this.

One thing which must exasperate authors is when readers hit them with criticism that boils down to: You didn’t write the novel I was expecting. Why didn’t you write your book like this (inserts own idea)?

I can’t avoid this with Ready Player One.

When I was a kid, one of my favourite comic strips was The Computer Warrior. It appeared in The Eagle, and came out during the Triassic era of British home computing in 1985. It has more than a hint of Tron about it, but if Edgar Wright ever wanted to adapt a British comic book property, The Computer Warrior is a perfect fit.

In it, a kid gets sucked into a virtual realm through his Commodore 64-type machine. Here, computer games become reality – you fight for real. If you lose, you are sent to The Nightmare Zone. 

This is where his best mate ended up; so the kid has to complete several computer games in order to win his friend’s freedom. To begin with, the games were fictional, generic Space Invader-type battles. Then someone hit upon the idea of using real-world computer games as a promotional tie-in. So the Computer Warrior played Wizard of Wor, Gauntlet, Pastfinder, Desert Fox, Side Arms and many other now-classic, sometimes forgotten games, before completing his quest. The strip was a big success, and ran for a whopping nine years, right up until Eagle closed.

I expected Ready Player One would be something like The Computer Warrior. It isn’t.

During key moments, when Parzival has to play classic games in order to find one of the keys or clear the gates for the next stage, I thought we’d have a description of someone playing a real-world version of these digital relics. The thoughts and feelings of Pac-Man, as he chomps his way around the maze, avoiding ghosts; now that’s something I’d want to read.

But you don’t get anything like this – you read about a kid standing in front of a games cabinet, mashing buttons and hunting for quarters in his pockets. It’s not quite the same, nor is it anywhere near as exciting.

Why didn’t you write your novel this way?

I know, I know.

The treasure hunt parts were fun, although the increasingly smug, high-five eighties geek lore references did get on my wick. I’m not saying I was the cool kid at school or anything but there’s something horrendously lame about this kind of behaviour.

So we get lots of references to video games, movies, TV shows and board games - most you’ll get, some you won’t. (One big thing that was missing, for me, was adventure gamebooks – the Fighting Fantasy/roll a dice games, or good old Choose Your Own Adventure.) These things have a currency in their own right, as the geeks compete either consciously or unconsciously, testing themselves to see who has the most knowledge of digital arcana, fully referenced, sourced, dated, accredited and annotated.  You wonder if scientists do the same thing; or academics; or cloistered monks a thousand years ago, poring over illuminated manuscripts.

Away from the trivia, there are some very serious points to be made in Ready Player One, and it is here that the book works best.

For a start, this book has lots to say about a life lived online. At one point Wade comes right out and says it: I’m a fat, pimply recluse. A shut-in. A loser. The only reason he isn’t in his mom’s basement is because mom’s long dead.

The book’s best part is when Wade is made a legalised slave for IOI industries. He works in tech support, and hates it. His stinging comments to mouth-breathing Oasis users are filtered out automatically by AI, and his very tone of voice is modulated so as not to offend. There’s a delicious cynicism in these parts; the revenge of patronised IT workers the world over.

Cline explores the idea that, in the future, having accrued astounding levels of personal debt, young people will become indentured to big companies. Wade is given enough food and shelter to exist on, with the dangled carrot of “paying off” his dues through work, which he never will.

The book is excellent during these parts. It was almost disappointing to jump out of Wade’s real world and back into Parzival’s digital grail quest. In these sections, Ready Player One was exceptional.

Cline also warns us about the perils of meeting people online. Now I have met people online and am happy to say I’m friends with them, despite never having met them face-to-face. But when you cross the boundary into love, romance, or just plain old sex, Problems Can Occur. I know folk who have met partners online, either through dating sites or shared interest forums, and I say to them: well played. There’s good sense in filtering out personality elements or interests in a potential mate which clash with your own. But you still have that messy, awkward, social interaction thing to do in real life, with all its blemished wonders.

Sex will be a key driver of virtual reality, as it has been in lots of entertainment technology (John Waters’ infamous quote about the real reason VHS was invented springs to mind). To his great credit, Cline goes there, outlining exactly what a computer geek shut-in like Wade will do for teenage kicks in this wild digital frontier. Have you seen those weird lifelike Japanese dolls? They’re targeted right at the Otaku, you can count on it. This stuff is moving faster than Chuck Palahniuk can imagine it. People are doing this right now.

There is another moment where Cline pulls the rug out from under us, when it seems Parzival and Art3mis are going to fulfil the story’s romantic requirements at a virtual nightclub in the Oasis. It’s almost a John Hughes or Cameron Crowe movie moment, complete with soaring pop music epiphany… almost… Until Art3mis brutally rips the needle off the record.

This scene was the best in the book. It was a necessary collision between unbridled fantasy and harsh reality. These things happen to most folk in teenage life, regardless of technology, but it will be food for thought for anyone who is enthused about all the distractions and controversies virtual reality is bound to bring. The most basic of which is: none of it is real.

If you scoff at the idea of people spending their lives plugged into machinery and experiencing nothing of the world outside, you should consider how computers are already an indispensable part of our existence. Your working day; your shopping; your aimless babble on Twitter, your herd mentality likes and shares; the commercial-break reality you serve up for friends and relatives on Facebook; the porn you climax to; the book reviews you read. At the risk of donning a full Chicken Little outfit, there are surely grave dangers in making our online existence even more immersive than it already is.

Whiny nerd voice: Why on earth didn’t you finish this novel with the words Player Two Has Entered The Game?

Now, I’m off for a run in the sunshine. Time for fresh air and exercise.

During my run I will listen to music on headphones, to help me forget the pain, the tiredness, the sweat, and the tedium. Later on, I’ll write some fiction, in the hope of one day taking people’s attention away from what’s really happening in their lives.

Maybe one day I’ll get my own call from Spielberg - who knows? Then people can sit down in a darkened room and see my fantasies projected onto a screen for a couple of hours, lost in a world of their own.

Reality can be over-rated. 

THE PRINCESS DIARIST

by Carrie Fisher

288 pages, Black Swan

(This review is of the audio version, read by Carrie Fisher and Billie Lourd)

Review by Pat Black

It’s something Carrie Fisher must have dreaded at first - people coming up to her and saying: “You were my first crush…” 

Over time this apprehensiveness mutated into many different things – boredom; hilarity; wry acceptance; shock and awe; even love, in return.

In her writing and on talk shows, Fisher made great comic capital out of being Princess Leia, the poster girl and fantasy fixation for millions of adolescent boys (and not a few girls). She was a very funny, talented and creative person.

Was. Ouch.

The Princess Diarist feels like it only came out about five minutes ago, and it sharpens a worldwide sense of grief over the still-stunning fact that the woman who played everyone’s favourite space princess is gone.

It contains Carrie Fisher’s actual diaries from 40 years ago, penned when she made the original Star Wars movie, aged just 19. However, that’s only a portion of the book. For the most part, it’s a memoir, written in the style of the role she played in the last couple of decades of her life: Carrie Fisher, raconteur.

Most of this book deals with the Star Wars shoot in the United Kingdom all those years ago, with a young cast who probably couldn’t have imagined even in their most stoned moments how successful George Lucas’ space opera would become.  

Well, I say “young”… are you still young at 34, the age Harrison Ford was when he first played Han Solo? That seems young-ish to me. It’s all a matter of perspective.

The main meat of this book is Fisher’s relationship with Ford. They had an affair during the Star Wars shoot, which for me has become more of an interesting story than anything to do with lightsabers, the Force, spaceships, ray guns, the Skywalker clan or intergalactic asthma.  

“Carrison”, as Fisher calls it, is the centrepiece of the book. She admirably, if disappointingly, keeps the juicier details under control. But we can be sure of one thing: she absolutely adored him.

He was married, though. And there is a galaxy’s worth of a difference between the ages of 19 and 34. She defends him, insisting Ford was not a womaniser; that their affair was “something that just happened”. (This is what people who have been caught having affairs usually say. “Oh, alright then,” said no-one in response, ever. I suppose an icepick in the forehead is something that can just happen, too.)

She also insists that she has never gone public before with the affair out of respect for Ford’s wife at the time. But Fisher is being just a teensy bit disingenuous. I remember something from a few years ago, either a talk show or a newspaper interview when one of the prequels came out, where she mentioned “how much fun” Harrison Ford was, and how he used to play pranks on her in her room while they were shooting Star Wars. “In her room” was the part I mentally underlined.

Fisher’s style for the memoir parts is mainly “crazy auntie”. In talking about Ford’s seduction of her, she comes across as a bouncy, but still insecure teenager, trapped in the body of a middle-aged person. The perfect guest on The Graham Norton Show, in other words. You can imagine her wry lines and puns being practised over many years on after-dinner speaking tours.

Part of this actually becomes painful. Funny though it is, Fisher over-thinks things, and her own part in them. I wonder if Harrison Ford – a man who comes across as bored, at best, in interviews – gave a fraction of this consideration to his on-set conquest. But for the most part, the Carrison story is fun, breezy - and absolutely first-class gossip.

Then something happens that slams on the brakes, Warner Bros cartoon-style. Fisher reveals her actual diaries, and her daughter Billie Lourd takes over the narration.

It’s a startling volte-face. Fisher is so serious, so cynical, in her teenage diaries that it’s hard to believe it’s the same person. There’s no doubt that it was written by a fairly young, fairly naive person – but the soul behind the words seems ancient. She is as proficient as she is playful with her pen – a precocious talent, without a doubt (and it’s worth remembering that writing was Fisher’s true vocation). I was listening to this being read aloud so I don’t know what form the lines take, but the young Fisher turns to poetry quite a lot, often catching you unawares. Nothing you’d put in a textbook for bored English students, but certainly startling and spontaneous.  

The diary is all about Harrison Ford. I’ll say it again – she absolutely adored him. We could be talking about love; certainly we are talking about infatuation. Fisher later admits she fantasised about marriage (“after a decent period of time following his sad divorce”, she inserts, somewhat hurriedly).

This has become a story on its own. It has textured the whole of the Star Wars saga, for me. What must she have felt when her character had to be “seduced” on screen by the same actor a couple of years later when they shot The Empire Strikes Back? To kiss him again, even on camera? How did Han and Leia’s “thrown-together” romance on-screen reflect the actors’ own lives and feelings at the time? 

There are other startling moments, too, such as when the young Fisher says: “I’m sorry it wasn’t you, Mark” - meaning Hamill, surely.  

It’s… heavy.

Fisher also discloses that she and other members of the cast and crew were smoking strong waccy baccy (Chewbaccy?) at the time. Sadly, it seems Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing did not partake of a puff, though a fellow can dream.

Later, Fisher and Ford sit beside each other in economy class as their plane crosses the Atlantic, after Star Wars has wrapped. They talk for most of the journey. Fisher’s melancholy is near-palpable. What a sad, poignant moment in life: your first big adult event, your first love affair, and it’s coming to an end.  

She remembers something Ford tells her, his exact words (I can almost hear the drawl): “You’ve got balls bigger than a samurai, kid.”

Princess Leia’s famous gold bikini from Return Of The Jedi was something worn under duress, we find out, though it’s also embraced in a curious way. You get the sense that Fisher is kind of embarrassed, though happy to accept she looked terrific in it - and probably wise enough not to complain too much, given that it’s such a fixed part of her on-screen identity. I was about to say, “not to mention its place in the fantasies of millions of boys” - but she does mention that, many times.  

More troubling is the idea that the young Fisher was told to lose 10 pounds before shooting began on Star Wars; that she thought she looked fat, and hated her appearance. It’s a sobering reminder that insecurities can seethe behind the prettiest faces. And that unpleasant people can foster them and profit from them.

The rest of the book is taken up with Fisher’s post-Leia life spent on the convention circuit, or “celebrity lapdancing”, to borrow her phrasing. There’s some gentle and not-so-gentle mockery of the things people say to her at these signings and celebrity meet n’ greets. But like many actors who are most commonly associated with one big role, Fisher moved from contempt to acceptance, and finally gratitude that people still love work she did decades ago. She admits that she loves being Princess Leia, although her favourite role will always be Carrie Fisher.

There are some stinging references to mortality. She mentions how much more valuable all those scribbled autographs will be once she dies. It’s difficult to accept that she has died. She is past tense; gone.

It’s a tough one, in so far as you can find it tough to lose a person you never met. Last year accounted for a lot of beloved stars, but the author’s death right at the very end of 2016 was one of the hardest to take. It’s unpleasant to think that Carrie Fisher could actually grow older and die; but you could say the same for anyone who became famous in the colour television age – David Bowie, Lemmy, Alan Rickman, Sir Roger Moore; take yer pick from a rich crop of recent recruits alone. 

Thanks to the glowing box in the corner, these people became ghosts while they were still alive - moving pictures, familiar to millions, but stuck in time, even as their real-time forms fell prey to the same forces which will account for us all. I’ve heard it said that the main reason we mourn singers, sports stars and actresses is because their deaths are a glancing blow from our own mortality. It’s not the biggest reason, for me, but it’s definitely part of the mix.

I didn’t know Carrie Fisher. I have no connection whatsoever with her life and her family, aside from a crudely-painted face on an action figure, or a flickering image beamed onto a screen from 40 years ago. (“Who is she? She’s beautiful.”)

And yet we feel so sad. She was my first crush. There’s not much more to it. That’s where I’ll leave this. 

REBECCA

by Daphne du Maurier

448 pages, Virago

This is a review of the audio version, narrated by Anna Massey

Review by Pat Black

Rebecca? Why bother with a review of Rebecca? This isn’t a new novel, sir. The previous reviewer wouldn’t have bothered with these kind of retrospective pieces, oh no, sir. That wouldn’t do at all. Begging your pardon, sir, I think it would be best if you didn’t review it. Will that be all?

A friend scared me recently by pointing out that there are a finite amount of books to be read before my life ends. We can only guess at this figure, but it is exact.

Going by the national average, my life is half over. I’m from Glasgow, so this assessment may be optimistic. Like the amount of days you have left, this number is unknowable and might not be as bad as you first thought - but it’s still there, and unsettling to consider.

Will it be 1,000 books? One hundred? Ten? Single figures?

I decided it might be an idea to make some of my remaining allocation count. So I read Rebecca.

I’d never read any of Daphne du Maurier’s novels before, though I have enjoyed some of her short fiction. I remember seeing Candida Doyle from Pulp at an event in Sheffield a couple of years back, clutching an ancient green-and-white spined Penguin collection of du Maurier stories. I thought this was a level of cool few humans can attain. And it planted a seed: I really should get round to Rebecca.

I’d never even seen any adaptations of Rebecca, and knew nothing of the plot – that’s almost an achievement, right up there with never having seen The Third Man, Ben-Hur or Citizen Kane. I should watch these films (there’s only a certain amount of films you have left to watch, after all). I should also read Wuthering Heights. And lots more Dickens. And King Lear. And so on.

You probably know the story back-to-front. A naïve young girl working as a companion/dogsbody for a nasty old sow in Monte Carlo meets a handsome widower, Maxim de Winter. He’s rather stern, but good-looking. If Christopher Plummer never played him, then this is a mistake by the forces that shape and guide the universe.

De Winter rescues the girl from a life of dull servitude and marries her in about 10 minutes flat before taking her back to his country pile in Cornwall – Manderley.

The narrator learns up-front that de Winter’s first wife, Rebecca, drowned off the Cornish coast the year before. This is an Important Fact.

The beautifully-kept house near the sea is run by the baleful Mrs Danvers. It’s fair to say she does not take kindly to the new girl appearing on the scene.

The house holds many secrets and lies. Our narrator, who is never named, picks her way through them, diffident and unsteady as a new-born doe.

The book throbs with atmosphere, buried tensions and passions that threaten to erupt at any moment. It helps that Rebecca is an Edwardian novel set in a country house, with servants, titles, calling cards and stringently policed, entirely proper behaviour. It’s beautifully mannered – which makes the spite, jealousy, suspicion and rage even more pronounced when it detonates.

A pal of mine who adores Sherlock Holmes once explained his fascination with the world of Conan Doyle’s great hero this way: “Everyone’s so polite, especially when they’re being rude.” That’s a good approach when it comes to taking Rebecca’s weird pulse.

Rebecca features three beautifully-drawn characters. Remarkably, one of these never even appears in the book. We do not see her face. We do not hear her speak. But we know her name.

I admit to over-using comparisons with the shark in Jaws for any hidden menace, but it’s apt for the lady in the title. Rebecca is dead, but she’s is an ever-present in the book, with signposts to her life and the effect she had on people littered throughout. Rebecca bewitches everyone – even, ultimately, the narrator, whose jealousy over the wild, dark, exotic competitor she will never meet threatens to trip into obsession. The slant of the letter “R” in her signature in the flyleaf of a poetry book; the gleam in the eye of her lovers; the dreadful pindrop silences any reference to her evokes; yellow barrels; the detached pier swinging back towards the beach; E and F, E and F. 

At first, I suspected that Rebecca might still be alive. Her gravitational pull is so strong that the world of Manderley becomes uncanny, warped. Even in death, her effect on people is corrosive. And yet, she is defined by her absence; she is a silhouette on the horizon, an unusual swell in the water. Objects like hairbrushes, mirrors and even dresses hanging in a wardrobe for the delectation of the moths are suffused with her essence. When the narrator intrudes upon the previous Mrs de Winter’s perfectly-preserved chambers at Manderley, it feels like Howard Carter breaking into the tomb of Tutankhamun. Small wonder Hitchcock adapted this book; I wonder if he was tempted to make Rebecca a blonde?

Our second extraordinary character is Mrs Van Hopper, the ridiculous old society dame. She’s the toxic woman in this story that people sometimes forget, hovering over the pre-Manderley section in Monte Carlo like a gleeful, bloated hornet. She chides and harasses her young charge, and takes a near-demented interest in everyone who crosses her path, claiming closeness and kinship with people she’s only known for about five minutes. She peers at strangers in restaurants and salons like a bird-watcher with a pair of field glasses. And like many gadflies who place great esteem on their place in society, Mrs Van Hopper is shockingly gauche when it comes to how other people might perceive her. When Maxim de Winter brutally scolds her at the dinner table, Mrs Van Hopper rationalises it as a compliment.

A common complaint by critics of Dickens is that he creates caricatures rather than characters. Grotesques and clowns, music hall jackanapes, dying waifs, heroes and heroines from the original soap operas. You might even agree with this - until that first moment you meet people in real life who resemble Dickens characters. I knew a Fagin; I knew a Bill Sykes; I knew a Mrs Jellyby.

The same is true of Mrs Van Hopper. I know a Mrs Van Hopper. The shock of recognition was disturbing.

I also know a Mrs Danvers.

A gaunt, poison-filled hypodermic needle, Mrs Danvers is one of the more memorable villains in all of 20^th century literature. As the long-standing chief housekeeper of Manderley, who kept the estate running while Mr de Winter went travelling to get over the shock of Rebecca’s death, Mrs Danvers is one of those long-standing employees who imagines that she owns the place. She has no humour in her, no kindness, but fathomless reserves of malice.

In a deft campaign of psychological warfare, Mrs Danvers sets about undermining her lady’s confidence from the very first by placing her in opposition to the memory of Rebecca. The narrator is all at sea, and driven to jealousy by the comparison. Mrs Danvers makes it clear that the new Mrs de Winter is not a patch on the previous one. She even controls where her mistress goes in her own home; trying all the while to keep her away from Rebecca’s shrine. It was the most compelling part of du Maurier’s strange psychodrama.

I am not by nature the sort of person who gets agitated watching the television. I don’t shout at talk shows, or offer alternative suggestions to girls running the wrong way in slasher movies. But du Maurier did something to me with Rebecca. Listening to the audiobook in the car, I was in a state of some excitement during the narrator’s confrontations with Mrs Danvers. I hooted like a chimpanzee, baring my teeth, clutching the wheel, urging the poor girl to do something about that horrible witch. God knows what I must have looked like to people I drove past, or other motorists passing by.   

I fantasised about what would happen if the narrator was a violent Glaswegian rather than a quivering debutante.

“Alabaster vase? Here’s yer alabaster vase, ya bastart!” (crash)

Mrs Danvers may be a puppetmaster, but she is in turn a marionette in du Maurier’s hands. There are several moments of exquisite manipulation by the author, but two in particular stand out. The first of these occurs when our lip-biting narrator is so wrapped up in the mystique of Rebecca that she makes a terrible faux pas when she answers the telephone, and the caller asks for “Mrs de Winter”.

It’s Mrs Danvers on the other end of the line, of course.

What was so extraordinary about this is that, psychologically, I made the same mistake. Du Maurier had planted the idea of Rebecca in readers’ minds so skilfully just prior to the call coming in that we have been conditioned to do the exact same thing as her narrator. Realisation came for me at the same moment as the narrator experienced her own shock and embarrassment. This was neat work.

This ramps up when, bearing that episode in mind, we are hand-led into another horrible moment for the narrator, when she agonises over what costume to choose for a grand fancy dress party at Manderley. This time, the embarrassment is very clearly signposted for the reader, from a long way off - but not to our narrator. Thanks to some barely-noticeable prodding from the satanic Mrs Danvers, she walks right into it; the tension is excruciating. 

There are three extraordinary monologues by Mrs Danvers during three confrontations with the new Mrs de Winter – an escalating series of encounters which reveal the depths of the housekeeper’s unhealthy affection, even passion, for her dead mistress.

The last of these almost ends in murder. The sense of helplessness in the young narrator as she looks out of that window into the fog, with the sea mist rolling over the grounds of Manderley, and Mrs Danvers’ gentle, reasonable suggestions washing over her, had me gnashing my teeth in frustration. Even when Mrs de Winter finally grows a pair and lashes out, her nemesis’ black magic is simply too strong.

The late Anna Massey – who I discovered played Mrs Danvers in a TV adaptation – plays a part to perfection here. There isn’t so much as a pause - not one single consonant or vowel - which feels false or misplaced. It’s poetry. Her Mrs Danvers is a voice echoing from the gates of hell, a truly wicked creation. Massey’s performance here is the best I’ve ever heard in an audiobook. Even when we meet the roguish Flavell later on, the nasal whine she affects is perfectly matched to his Edwardian rake – like a dissolute, morally blighted Bertie Wooster. But her Danvers is the shining jewel. It made me wonder at what new dimensions there are to be uncovered with this character – if she was younger, perhaps, more comely. I could see Amanda Abbington doing great things with Mrs Danvers.  

Then there’s Manderley itself, one of the great country estates in all literature, standing alongside Brideshead and Bleak House. The opening chapter takes us through the place in fine detail, literally leading us up the garden path. This was sumptuous writing, which had me wondering if it would have made it past many agents today, all other elements being equal.

Even after Manderley’s secrets are exposed, there’s still some delicious tension when the bounder Flavell turns up, intent on causing trouble for Maxim de Winter. During informal questioning by a magistrate featuring all the key players, we find ourselves in the queasy position of siding with the conspirators, as suspicions, claims and counter-claims are aired. Without going into too much detail, in case you’re as naïve as me when it comes to Rebecca, this too was remarkable, as villainous characters become the only people who see the truth, and misunderstandings become the engines of salvation. Du Maurier misleads us, time and time again.

Rebecca is a voluptuous novel, wholly irresistible. It’s a dark psychological study of jealousy and malice, and yet also a fine thriller and page-turner, with some crafty twists and turns. Eighty years on it still exerts a weird power over the reading public. By one recent estimate, it still sells 4,000 copies per month. That’s a whole lot of people making the same decision as me to promote it from the bucket list. You won’t regret doing so - it is a treat. 

THE SNOWMAN

The Snowman

by Jo Nesbo

576 pages, Vintage

(This review is of the unabridged audio edition, read by Sean Barrett)

Review by Pat Black

Audiobooks. I’m big into them, now. We’re setting foot into a whole new world.

Stepping gingerly into my aural canal; taking care not to tangle your boots in the rough gorse at the entrance; hammering crampons into my cochlea; trudging ever east – fudgy underfoot – in that slow, cotton wool-stuffed journey towards my brain.

I was already cheating on my regular bookshelf with my Kindle. The two had come to an understanding, if not quite a truce. The bookshelf knows that it has the quality and the sturdiness I will forever come back to and treasure, but the Kindle can always be counted on for a filthy 10 minutes before bed, or an even dirtier thumb-trembler at lunchtime.  

Now I’m cheating on them both with audiobooks in the car. When will the house come crashing down?

In truth I wish I’d made this switch a couple of years ago, when I first started a fairly long commute by car. Circumstances at the moment do not allow for much in the way of reading time. It gets so that I dream of having a holiday somewhere with a beach and blue water; when asked why, I honestly reply that it’s to clear my books backlog.

I think I might need help – actual hired help, personal readers to go through the unread books round the clock, before reporting back to me later. I’d be a sort of Barbara Cartland in reverse.

Anyway, this was my second foray into the world of Audible.com, thanks to a particularly thoughtful Christmas pressie, and it was just as enjoyable as my first. 

Jo Nesbo’s books were a familiar sight on three-for-two tables at Waterstone’s and elsewhere in the wake of Stieg Larsson’s stunning post-mortem success roughly a decade ago. A few times I was almost tempted. Clever marketing, anyway; on the front cover was an image of an attractive, if somewhat unsettled looking girl with dark eyes and hair. Salander, you think, almost subliminally. The cover and the author’s name scream “Scandie Noir” at you, and that’s exactly what you get. To be fair to Nesbo, his work was around long before Stieg Larsson’s, but this is the book that launched him globally.

The Snowman is centred on the Norwegian capital Oslo, and stars the grizzled police inspector Harry Hole. According to the audiobook, you pronounce Hole as “hooleh”, close to “hula”, and not, er, “hole”, as in the thing in your bucket, or your shoe, or, eh…

The same was true of the author’s name, which is more like “Nesb’” - the word truncated after the B - rather than “Nesboh”. This was according to the pronunciation used by the actor Sean Barrett, who narrates the whole book, anyway. It may not actually be the way it’s intended to be spoken, though I don’t doubt the actor has done his research.

Within minutes of pressing Play, thoughts of Toast of London were battling the spoken word for supremacy in my mind, but I don’t say this to mock or belittle Barrett – it’s a brilliant performance, and we’ll come back to that shortly.

The novel is a... *paste crime novel cliché here*. Thrill ride? Roller-coaster? Page-turner? It is all of these things. How about “a thoroughly entertaining and engaging psycho-thriller”?

Someone is picking off women who are married with children - striking when the first snows of winter fall. The women often vanish without trace, although there is one ghastly exception which shows us how sadistic the murderer is. The killer leaves a calling card at the scene of the disappearances, which gives him, or her, their tabloid name: a snowman, staring at the windows of the house. 

You will find a couple of nits to pick. A big one is Hole: brilliant but maverick detective, bit of a loner, drink problem, haunted by the past, still has loads of sex. He could be a Scandie Inspector Rebus, but then Rebus comes from familiar stock in his own right. Inspector Cliché.

“Stock” is a key element of The Snowman. The very uncomfortable topic of unfaithful mothers and cuckolded fathers unwittingly raising children who are not their own is a big factor, as is a rare genetic blood disorder which could ultimately point towards the killer's identity. 

Or not.

Suspects come and go, some arousing suspicion, some avoiding it. There's a lot of “hey - this person's the killer! No, wait, that's a rod silde - this person's the killer! No, wait...”

This helps muddy the waters sufficiently to allow the real killer to slither past the reader undetected. They appear on your radar, of course, but Nesbo skilfully makes you doubt the readings. As such, The Snowman just about passes the key test of any mystery: Did you guess who did it? Well, kinda, but they were on a shortlist, and I was never sure, even after the moment they were unmasked.

This is the ludic element of every mystery, thriller and whodunnit. There’s a game going on between writer and reader, and the story has to dispense with logic at certain times in order to fool you. It's a board game, with a host of suspects lined up, motive attached, and all with a potential part to play. In a sense, if the author wrong-foots you, they have to strain credibility in order to make it all fit. It all makes sense in the end. It’s a big novel, and Nesbo handles the story and its pay-off well. In considering this, I thought of Ian Rankin; he claims he often has no idea who the killer is when he starts writing, the better to surprise himself – and hopefully, his readers.

This book felt like a series I'd read before owing to one or two stock types, but characterisation is well handled. Hole is memorably described as having a “voice like a lawn-mower”, and I'll praise Sean Barrett's performance in that respect right away.

Then there's Markus Skarra, Hole's colleague on the force. He's blunt, rude and faintly moronic, fulfilling a sort of Inspector Lestrade function, blundering in and getting things wrong, allowing Hole to narrow his eyes and make the correct assessment. Skarra reminded me of more policemen of my acquaintance than Hole did. And yet, despite some shocking sexism when he makes a terrible pass at a colleague, I had a sneaking liking for Skarra.

But the chief pleasure in The Snowman for me was in the performance of the actor narrating the tale. I was tickled to find out that Sean Barrett played the Priest With The Very Boring Voice in the Father Ted Christmas special, a shocking 20 years ago now. His voice certainly isn’t boring here, but it’s memorably rich and deep. There’s a couple of Steven Toast-style moments – I’m sure that isn’t how you pronounce “flaccid”, fella – but I admired the way he slipped into and out of different characters’ voices without sounding silly. By and large he goes for a Scandinavian burr for Hole and his own Actor English accent for everyone else, but I was tickled when he opted for northern English tones for Skarra. For all I know, that’s what people in parts of Oslo actually sound like, but nonetheless it was inspired.

It’s a shame he doesn’t try for a Scandie accent throughout – words like “panties” and “c*ck” would sound terrific in a Norwegian accent, as would “nipples”. Maybe spoken with an air of hysteria, like that lad with the goggles and the rifle at the start of The Thing.

“Neecht! Neeples!”

“Nipples” are significant in this story.

This is the essence of hypocrisy coming from a Scotsman, but I heard a pleasing poetry in the odd names and their pronunciation. Despite all those hard, abrupt consonants bouncing off each other like drunks in a taxi queue, there’s a strange mellifluousness in the Scandinavian tongue. It got so I would repeat the names every time Sean Barrett uttered them. Katrine Bratt (“Brahtt-eh”). Arve Stop (“Schtupp”). Idar Vetlesen. Markus Skarra. Zaphod Beeblebrokkse. I loved rolling them around in my mouth.

So, hats off to Sean Barrett – hours on end of reading, fully committed, with never a slip or an undersold line. My only other experience of audiobooks prior to my current kick was a thriller that I listened to during an insane phase of my life when I walked to and from work every day. It was read by an American actor who sounded bored for most of it. This made me bored, too, and I didn’t get to the end. It put me off audiobooks for years. I’m pleased to say this production has restored my faith in them.

However, sex scenes read aloud… now, there’s the sticking point, so to speak. Naughty bits in books are simply not meant to be experienced this way. They’re furtive things, best kept private, or even secret, and they work best when internalised. Actually saying those words aloud must be a bit like something bizarre you blurt out during orgasm, and then spend the rest of your sex life trying to live down.

How the poor man didn’t corpse saying things like “she grabbed his throbbing d*ck” and “I’d like to see your p*ssy”, I’ll never know. Maybe he did. Through the magic of digital editing, it’s all seamless.

I dare you to do it with your partner, your friends, or your workmates, the next time you read a dirty bit in a book. Pick a deep, fruity voice… or a sharp, raspy one… imagine John Hurt… hell, go Full Richard Burton… and let rip.

Next up on the audio list: Wolf Hall. 

SEXTON BLAKE

(BBC audio)
by Donald Stuart

Review by Hereward L.M. Proops

Is a radio dramatisation suitable fodder for a Booksquawk review? Probably not, but I've been so busy recently that I've been hard pushed to get any book reviews written lately and really enjoyed listening to these recently rediscovered recordings of a BBC radio adaptation of my favourite fictional crimefighter. First broadcast in August 1967, the series only ran for 17 episodes before coming to an end in December of the same year. The recordings, thought lost for many decades have recently turned up (probably in someone's shed). This isn't the first radio series of Blake's adventures and his stories had been thrilling generations of readers by the late sixties. Indeed, devoted fans of the detective will point out that the 1950s and 1960s could hardly be called Sexton Blake's golden years. The outlandish villains and often-fantastical adventures of the 1920s and 1930s had been replaced with grittier, more realistic scenarios. However, whilst Donald Stuart's radio dramas may lack zany felons such as Zenith the Albino or Waldo the Wonderman, they make up for it by being tight, satisfying little thrillers.

The late William Franklyn stars as Blake, giving the detective a laconic yet confident manner. Blake's natural reserve and stiff upper lip contrasts wonderfully with the energy and wit of his youthful assistant Tinker, played with great Cockney charm by David Gregory. Other well-established characters such as the dull-witted Detective Inspector Coutts and Blake's long-suffering secretary Paula Dane make regular appearances and give the two lead characters the opportunity to exchange some fast-paced and pleasingly chirpy banter. Considering their age, the recordings are of a pretty good quality. There are a couple of moments where one gets the impression that a spot of remastering would have been of use but generally everything is crisp and clear.

There are actually three double-CD collections currently available, so here's a quick rundown of them.

“Liliesfor the Ladies and Other Stories” contains the first three episodes from the series. The titular “Lilies for the Ladies” sees Blake investigating the suspicious deaths of a number of wealthy high society women. “The Sin-Eater” is a complex tale where Blake is faced with a baffling series of cryptic messages written on playing cards whilst “Bluebeard's Key” sees the detective on the trail of a serial killer.

The second collection, “The Vampire Moon and Other Stories” offers up some slightly faster-paced tales than the first and is my personal favourite of the three. “The Vampire Moon” sees Blake investigating the mysterious death of a secret agent in a Chinese restaurant whose last words hint at a terrifying conspiracy that threatens the world. “The Fifth Dimension” has the detective scratching his head over a truly bizarre case of a disappearing man and “First Class Ticket to Nowhere” sees Blake and his team of intrepid crime-busters squaring up to an international ring of drug smugglers.

The third collection, “The Eight Swords and Other Stories” offers the best value for money with four entertaining stories. “The Eight Swords” has Blake investigate the poisoning of a rather unpleasant actress at a hair salon. “A Murder of Crows” revolves around the pursuit of a serial killer who only targets men called George Crow. “Double and Quit” is a cracking Cold War tale of espionage where Blake is recruited as a special agent and forced to go undercover in a prison. Finally, “You Must Be Joking” sees Blake on the trail of a killer who taunts his victims with chilling limericks informing them of their fate.

All three collections come with a bonus recording of a very early Sexton Blake drama from 1930. Being one of the earliest surviving examples of a radio drama, one shouldn't expect too much from “Murder on the Portsmouth Road”. The sound quality of this bonus story is so poor that it's a struggle to understand exactly what is going on. Even if you do finally get to grips with the scratchy recording, the paper-thin plot doesn't really stand up to the more sophisticated narratives of the other stories on the CDs. As a period piece, it's a pleasant little distraction but is unlikely to be listened to more than once.

The BBC and AudioGo should be commended for these releases. Whilst the somewhat dated radio dramatisations of a forgotten Sherlock Holmes clone are undoubtedly aimed at a (very) niche market, they are undeniably enjoyable and well worth tracking down if you're looking for something a little bit different.

Hereward L.M. Proops