Dubliners Part II. By James Joyce. Read by Jim Norton. Naxos, three CDs, 4 hours 15 minutes. £10.99 (cassettes £8.99)
'A person resembling a poor clergyman or a poor actor appeared in the doorway . . ." Like all of Joyce's books, Dubliners is superb reading-aloud material; unlike most of them, it is also gloriously accessible, and never more so than in this elegant, vibrant performance. Norton's musical voice is perfect for Joyce's musical stories - most of which, of course, end up in minor keys - and the Naxos producer picks up the musical ball and runs with it, cleverly weaving some snatches of period tunes into the mix and adding immeasurably to the atmosphere. This 3-CD set, which includes 'A Painful Case', 'Ivy Day in the Committee Room', 'A Mother', 'Grace' and 'The Dead', took the gold award for unabridged classic fiction at the recent Spoken Word Awards 2001; do yourself a favour, and buy it while it's still around. Then do yourself another favour, and buy Dubliners Part I, from the same production team.
While we're on the subject of those awards, it's worth noting that several audiobooks which were favourably reviewed in this column carried off gold medals, including: Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, read by female performer of the year Lorelei King; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, read by Stephen Fry, and P.G. Wodehouse's Thank You, Jeeves, read by male performer of the year Simon Callow. Other productions which sound as if they're well worth investigating are a dramatised version of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, read by Prunella Scales, Robert Wilson's A Small Death in Lisbon, read by Sean Barrett, and Shakespeare's Richard III, with a cast led by Kenneth Branagh.
Marie Antoinette. By Antonia Fraser. Read by Lindsay Duncan. Orion, four tapes, 6 hours 30 minutes. £12.99 in UK
Marie Antoinette has gone down in history as the epitome of flibbertigibbet femininity; but Antonia Fraser has the cheek to suggest that, on the contrary, she'd make a pretty good role model for girlies of any century. Sold to the highest bidder by her ferocious mother, Maria Teresa of Austria, plonked down at the ludicrously formal court of Versailles as a barely literate teenager, the unfortunate queen was a kindly soul whose crime was to be more interested in raising children than in ruling France.
She grew steadily in stature to the point where her dignity and courage during her trial by a revolutionary tribunal aroused the admiration of even her most implacable enemies. Hers is a compelling, convincing and tragic story, and the book constitutes both a shocking denunciation of the abuses of the Ancien RΘgime, and a timely re-examination of the concept we in the "free" world take so much for granted: "libertΘ, ΘgalitΘ, fraternitΘ".
Electric Light. By Seamus Heaney. Read by the author. Faber/Penguin, two tapes, 1 hour 30 minutes. £8.99 in UK
Images of winter evenings in the Bann valley rub shoulders with murky memories from Macedonian poetry festivals in Heaney's latest collection (his 11th - imagine). He reads, with his accustomed sonority, a series of poems which examine the origins of thought, of life as we know it and, at a deeper level still, of words themselves. This is not the easiest of Heaney's books to get to grips with - but it certainly bears repeated listening, for which the audio format is obviously ideal, especially in its full, unabridged version.
English Passengers. By Matthew Kneale. Read by Simon Callow. HarperCollins, four tapes, 6 hours. £12.99 in UK
In 1857 the good ship Sincerity sets sail from England, bound for the other side of the world. Hardly can a vessel ever have been less aptly named, for she carries, along with her Manx captain's cleverly-concealed load of contraband brandy and tobacco, an English clergyman hell-bent on finding the garden of Eden - and a surgeon who is putting the finishing touches to a nasty thesis concerning the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. One by one they narrate Matthew Kneale's complex tapestry of guilt and innocence, but it's a young Tasmanian aboriginal named Peevay on whom the listener comes to depend for a reasonably reliable view of things. Here, in the Whitbread Book of the Year 2000, is culture shock writ large, both entertaining and ineffably sad. Simon Callow does his best - sometimes, perhaps, tries too hard - with a book which demands voices within voices within voices.
Purple Cane Road. By James Lee Burke. Read by Will Patton. Orion Audio, four tapes, 6 hours. £12.99 in UK
Fans of James Lee Burke won't need to be told what to expect from this multi-award-winning crime writer, but what if this is your first time? Well, you could do worse than study the cover of Purple Cane Road, which depicts a weird, sombre swamp peopled by spooky black shapes looming out of the back-lit murk. That, pretty much, is the world of Detective Dave Robicheaux - who, in this moody masterpiece, sets out to track down his mother's killer. Besides a beautifully-handled storyline and the most bizarrely-named characters you'll ever encounter (with personalities to match), Purple Cane Road is saturated with the stormy heat of the American South, recreated rather than read by Will Patton, and punctuated by generous helpings of lazy-paced blues.
Anil's Ghost. By Michael Ondaatje. Read by Paul Bhattacharjee. Macmillan, two tapes, 3 hours. £8.99 in UK
Searing would be too unsubtle a word for this elegiac study of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka - except that, gentle as it is, its images burn themselves into the brain with the unmistakable incandescence of the writing on the wall. It is a terrible tale, specific to Sri Lanka but also horribly applicable to the wider world. As usual with Ondaatje, ambiguous love stories take centre stage: and in Anil, the young forensic anthropologist who returns to her native island after creating a new life in America, he has created a heroine for the 21st century. Paul Bhattacharjee's reading is perfectly weighted, warm and compassionate without a trace of sentimentality.