Meaningful engagement: Listening to audiobooks during a lockdown

In another time and place, audiobooks turned out to be an unexpectedly pleasant and informative diversion. I had disdainfully held off listening to them for a long time, believing that they would be inferior to an actual book (whatever ‘actual’ may mean nowadays). After hearing a few, I was glad to change my mind.

By the time the lockdown was announced, I had several lined up, ready to inform and illuminate. One would think that given all the extra hours at hand, this would be an appropriate pursuit. One would be incorrect. All these days later, I find that I’m listening to much less than before.

Earlier, it was while commuting and exercising that audiobooks became obligatory. The first of these activities is now non-existent and the second, truncated. In any case, coronavirus concerns are making it hard to pay attention, be it to audiobooks or anything else.

Time was when Stephen Fry’s fruity narration of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels – close to a whopping 72 hours of it – was an experience to be relished. Not to mention Alex Jennings’s enthralling recital of the five novels in Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose series. I couldn’t get enough.

Such feats are, I fear, beyond me nowadays. Often, I fall asleep in the middle of a passage, however engrossing. Household chores would presumably be a good accompaniment, but in my case the infernal drone of the hand-held vacuum cleaner overwhelms most other sounds. At other times, attention drifts to critical issues such as whether plasma therapy is the breakthrough it’s made out to be, or if there’s an adequate supply of biscuits at home.

Despite these character flaws, I’ve managed to finish a few. Hanif Kureishi’s recent collection, the appropriately-titled What Happened? narrated by the author himself, proved to be perfect. It helped that many of these essays and stories are between five and 15 minutes in the telling, an acceptable investment of time during these days of distraction. Not to mention the allure of Kureishi speaking about his dissolute days in London and airing views on David Bowie and Georges Simenon, among others.

Not all authors, of course, are adept at recording their own work, and they’re certainly not expected to be. When they are, however, the outcome can be ideal. I’ve just ambitiously and almost simultaneously started Kevin Barry’s sonorous Night Boat to Tangier and Anne Enright’s resonant Actress. So far, so delightful. (Perhaps it’s the Irish accent.)

Celebrity recitals of books

I’m normally wary of celebrity recitals of books – are they just vanity projects? – but on more occasions than not, such fears have been unfounded. In pre-lockdown days, I was spellbound by Colin Firth’s masterful narration of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. I listened to it twice, in fact. Jeremy Irons’ version of Nabokov’s Lolita is another memorable example.

An unusual choice of narrator was Benedict Cumberbatch for physicist Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, but here, too, his honeyed tones were both capable and rewarding. When the man who played Doctor Strange tells you about time being an illusion, you tend to listen. Unfortunately, I didn’t care as much for Claire Danes’ reading of Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey. Proficient, yes, but a bit too earnest for my liking.

Narrators, clearly, have an outsized role to play in one’s enjoyment of an audiobook. Several times, I’ve whipped off the headphones when encountered by bothersome accents or misplaced emphases. The flip side of the coin is to seek out other books narrated by those I’ve liked. An example is the aforementioned Alex Jennings who, I was pleased to discover, has also recorded Susan Cooper’s Arthurian The Dark is Rising series, among many others.

Other narrators have become linked with specific authors. Michael Jayston, for instance, has recorded most of John le Carré’s novels. Having so far listened to the first two in the Smiley-versus-Karla trilogy as well as A Perfect Spy, one can confirm that his performance is not just apt but marvelous. (A satisfying bit of trivia: Jayston played the role of Peter Guillam in the acclaimed 1979 TV version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.)

Despite concentration being more difficult during a lockdown, I must confess I couldn’t resist acquiring the audiobook of Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks Newburyport the other day. This Man Booker-nominated novel, as you probably already know, is famous for primarily being a single sentence that runs for over 1,000 pages. The audio version narrated by Stephanie Ellyneis – gulp – over 45 hours long.

Suspecting that this may prove too much to handle, no matter how many days it’s spread over, I also obtained the Neil Shah-narrated version of Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar, translated by Srinath Perur. It’s less than three hours in length, and I should be able to manage that, at least, before the lockdown ends.