Tag Archives: Audiobooks

SISTER SCRIBES’ GUEST: ALISON LARKIN ON WHY SHE WRITES

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Welcome to Alison Larkin, bestselling author of The English American, award-winning Austen narrator and now the narrator of The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen and The Unexpected Past of Miss Jane Austen. 

I’m with Dorothy Parker who said “I hate writing. I love having written.”

I was born in Washington DC, adopted by English parents and raised in England and Africa and I’ve written for as long as I can remember – poems and plays mostly. But they were usually pretty surreal.

Then something happened that changed everything. Including the kind of writing I did.

It was the early 1990’s. I’d recently left drama school and was playing Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm in Newbury when the ‘phone rang back stage and I learned that the birth mother I knew nothing about and had been searching for was alive and well and keen for me to come and visit her at her home – in Bald Mountain, Tennessee.

So I went to Tennessee to meet her. Then I moved to New York and became a stand-up comic, because what else do you do?

Growing up, we didn’t talk about feelings in my family, which was helpful I think because the. absence of any other outlet meant I had to write, even though I hated it. I’m sure I never would have written the stand-up comedy act that led to the one woman show that led to my novel The English American if I hadn’t had to.

Photo credit Sabine von Falken

But I did have to. Why? Because people kept asking me what it was like meeting my ‘real’ mother and every time they used those words I felt as if I’d been punched in the heart. Because, to me, my ‘real’ mother was the mother who had raised me. And yet I had needed to find my birth mother and people didn’t ‘get’ why.

So I decided to combine stand-up comedy and theatre and show people through a one woman show in which I played myself, my English mother, and my American birth mother who were diametrical opposites in every way. The show was a hit and led to sitcom development deals in Hollywood and a run in LA and London. And then I had children and stopped performing comedy because I wanted to hang out with my kids while they still wanted to hang out with me.

But then I started to get really annoyed with the way adopted people were portrayed in books and on TV as eternally damaged victims at best, or serial killers. So I thought that maybe if I could put an authentic adopted heroine at the center of the kind of novel that I like to read  then maybe people on a beach or a plane would understand why someone from a very happy adoptive family would need to find the people she came from. And maybe, just maybe, instead of having to go through the whole thing every time someone said “What was finding your birth mother really like” I could say “It would take a book to explain. Oh! Wait! I’ve written one.”

After The English American came out I was rescued from writing by the audiobook industry who set me up with my own studio and hired me to narrate the first of over 200 audiobooks I’ve narrated to date. And I was so busy raising my children there was no time – or need – to do any writing.

My handsome, brilliant Indian fiancé, Bhima, loved my writing. “Why don’t you write more,” he pressed me four months ago. “Because I’m happy,” I said smiling again at the first man I ever dared to fully love. I’d spent a lifetime looking for him. And finally, in my 50’s, there he was.

Then he died. So maybe I will be writing again after all.

 

Between now and Christmas, for every audiobook downloaded directly via www.alisonlarkinpresents.com one will be donated to people in need.

 

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES: SUSANNA BAVIN ON BEING READ TO

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When I was a teacher, I made a practice of reading to the children every day, whether it was a complete story or the continuing story of what the children called a “chapter book.” Often there would be time for both on the same day. The children loved being read to. I remember the near-hysteria that was occasioned time and again by John Prater’s Once Upon a Time, as the young audience glimpsed the fairy tale characters strolling one by one onto the pages; and all those favourites that were loved by class after class, such as Gobbolino, the Witch’s Cat, Red Herring and The Kitnapping of Mittens.

Perhaps my favourite memory is of finishing reading Dick King-Smith’s Lady Daisy to a Year 2 class. There was a moment of breathless silence at the sheer perfection of the ending and then the children burst into spontaneous applause. (Those children will be doing their A levels this summer!)

Frankly, I think that being read to is one of life’s joys. I also think that the pleasure of being read to is something we never grow out of. As an adult, I always have two books on the go – the book I am reading and the one I’m listening to. As well as having favourite authors, I also have favourite readers and there have been times when I have chosen a talking book by an author I have never read, simply because I know I will enjoy the reader’s performance. Yes, reading an audiobook is a performance, a proper acting job, and it takes huge and specialist skill.

The narrator is required to tell the story in a way that conveys character and atmosphere, but without their reading being intrusive. The listener should be absorbed by the story itself and, other than enjoying listening to it, shouldn’t be specially aware of the reader’s voice at the time. Gordon Griffin is the master of this. A veteran of more than six hundred audiobooks, he has a companionable and quietly expressive voice that is easy to listen to.

When The Deserter’s Daughter was published in 2017, the audiobook rights were bought by Isis Soundings and, as a keen talking book listener, I was thrilled to think that my book was going to be recorded. I was curious as to which actress would be chosen. Anxious, too. What if they selected a reader whom I wasn’t keen on? In the event, Julia Franklin was invited to do the job – and I couldn’t be happier. She has been up there among my favourite readers for years and I am enormously proud to have her as ‘my’ reader. Her performances are engaging and unforced, with an intuitive sense of character and timing. I don’t know whether authors are supposed to listen to their own talking books, but I loved listening to The Deserter’s Daughter and A Respectable Woman and am delighted that Julia has added an extra dimension to my books.

 

 

Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After Out On Audiobook

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Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After, the compelling memoir from Heather Harpham about her journey from the bliss of young love, to handling a shock-pregnancy alone, to the earth-dropping learning your new-born has an incurable blood disease – narrated by the author herself. Lyrical, heart-breaking, loving and hopeful, the book has been phenomenally well-received in the US

A shirt-grabbing love story that follows a one-of-a-kind family through twists of fate that require nearly unimaginable choices.

Happiness begins with a charming courtship between hopelessly attracted opposites: Heather, a world-roaming California girl, and Brian, an intellectual, homebody writer, kind and slyly funny but loath to leave his Upper West Side studio. Their magical interlude ends, full stop, when Heather becomes pregnant – Brian is sure he loves her, only he doesn’t want kids.

Heather returns to California to deliver their daughter alone, buoyed by family and friends. Mere hours after Gracie’s arrival, Heather’s bliss is interrupted when a nurse wakes her: ‘Get dressed. Your baby is in trouble.’

This is not how Heather had imagined new motherhood – alone, heartsick, an unexpectedly solo caretaker of a baby who smelled ‘like sliced apples and salted pretzels’ but might be perilously ill.

Brian reappears as Gracie’s condition grows dire; together, Heather and Brian have to decide what they are willing to risk to ensure their girl sees adulthood.

The grace and humour that ripple through Harpham’s writing transform the dross of heartbreak and parental fears into a clear-eyed, warm-hearted view of the world.

Profoundly moving and subtly written, Happiness radiates in many directions – new, romantic love; gratitude for a beautiful, inscrutable world; deep, abiding friendship; the passion a parent has for a child; and the many unlikely ways to build a family. Ultimately, it’s a story about love and happiness in their many crooked configurations.

 

The Happiness audiobook will be available at Audible.co.uk from Thursday 7th September, £18.99.

 

A New Way to Celebrate Irish Culture: Most Inspired Irish Audiobooks for St Patricks Day

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  1. Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde – Written by Oscar Wilde – Narrated by Judi Dench, Jeremy Irons, Derek Jacobi, Sinead Cusak, Joanna Lumley, Samantha Bond, Robert Harris, Geoffrey Palmer, Donald Sinden, Elaine Stritch

Here is a collection of the Oscar Wilde’s famous fairy tales, read by a cast of leading British actors.

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  1. Ulysses – Written by James Joyce – Narrated by Jim Norton

Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce’s alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another.

 

  1. Let the Great World Spin – Written by Colum McCann – Narrated by anon

It is August, 1974, and a tightrope walker is suspended between the twin towers, watched by thousands in the streets below. Elegantly weaving together their seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful novel comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the tightrope walker’s “artistic crime of the century.” Featuring a stunning ensemble performance by the narrators.

 

  1. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha – Written by Roddy Doyle – Narrated by Aidan Gillen

Paddy Clarke is ten years old. Paddy Clarke lights fires. Paddy Clarke’s name is written in wet cement all over Barrytown, north Dublin. Paddy Clarke’s heroes are Father Damien (and the lepers), Geronimo and George Best. Paddy Clarke has a brother called Francis, but Paddy calls him Sinbad and hates him because that’s the rule. Paddy Clarke knows the exact moment to knock a dead scab from his knee. Paddy Clarke loves his Ma and Da, but it seems like they don’t love each other, and Paddy’s world is falling apart.

 

  1. Round Ireland with a Fridge – Written by Tony Hawks – Narrated by Tony Hawks

Whilst in Ireland for an International Song Competition, Tony Hawks was amazed to see a hitch-hiker, trying to thumb a lift, but with a fridge. This seemed amazingly optimistic – his Irish friends, however thought nothing of it at all. ‘I had clearly arrived in a country’, writes Tony, ‘where the qualifications for ‘eccentric’ involved a great deal more than that to which I had become used’. Two years pass but the fridge incident haunts our author. Until one night, heavy with drink, he finds himself arguing about Ireland with a friend. It is, he insists, a ‘magical place’, so magical in fact, that a man could even get a lift with a fridge. The next morning there is a note by the bed. ‘I hereby bet Tony Hawks the sum of One Hundred Pounds that he cannot hitch-hike around the circumference of Ireland with a fridge within one calendar month’. The document was signed. The bet was made. This book is the story of Tony’s adventures through that incredible month. The people he meets, the difficulties, the triumphs. The fridge.

 

  1. Irish History for Dummies – Written by Mike Cronin – Narrated by Patrick Moy

Putting history into a perspective, Irish History for Dummies is an engaging, entertaining and educational trip through time, packing in equal parts fun and facts, providing listeners with a riveting history of this ancient land. The history of Ireland has shaped the world far beyond its borders. And few stories have a greater need for a balanced and light-hearted telling than the complex and often controversial saga of Ireland and her people.

  1. W. B. Yeats: Selected Poems – Written by W. B. Yeats – Narrated by Donald Sutherland

William Butler Yeats, the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, is not only one of the greatest poets of the 20th century but one of the most widely read. The landscape, myths, legends, and folklore of his homeland lie at the heart of his poetic imagination, and the unique musicality of Ireland adds to the richness of his verse. But the themes of his poetry are universal and timeless: the conflict between life and death, love and hate, and the meaning of man’s existence in an imperfect world.

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  1. Waiting for Godot – Written by Samuel Beckett – Narrated by Sean Barrett, David Burke, Terence Rigby, Nigel Anthony

There is now no doubt that not only is Waiting for Godot the outstanding play of the 20th century, but it is also Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece. Yet it is both a popular text to be studied at school and an enigma. The scene is a country road. There is a solitary tree. It is evening. Two tramp-like figures, Vladimir and Estragon, exchange words. Pull off boots. Munch a root vegetable. Two other curious characters enter. And a boy. Time passes. It is all strange yet familiar. Waiting for Godot casts its spell as powerfully in this audiobook recording as it does on stage.

  1. How the Irish Saved Civilization – Written by Thomas Cahill – Narrated by Liam Neeson

From the fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne – the “dark ages” – learning, scholarship, and culture disappeared from the European continent. The great heritage of Western civilization – from the Greek and Roman classics to Jewish and Christian works – would have been utterly lost were it not for the holy men and women of unconquered Ireland.

 

  1. The Irish Americans: A History – Written by Jay P. Dolan – Narrated by Jim McCabe

Jay Dolan of Notre Dame University is one of America’s most acclaimed scholars of immigration and ethnic history. In The Irish Americans, he caps his decades of writing and teaching with this magisterial history of the Irish experience in the United States. Although more than 30 million Americans claim Irish ancestry, no other general account of Irish American history has been published since the 1960s. Dolan draws on his own original research and much other recent scholarship to weave an insightful, colorful narrative. He follows the Irish from their first arrival in the American colonies through the bleak days of the potato famine that brought millions of starving immigrants; the trials of ethnic prejudice and “No Irish Need Apply”, the rise of Irish political power and the heyday of Tammany politics; to the election of John F. Kennedy as president, a moment of triumph when an Irish American ascended to the highest office in the land.