Still Life a work of art - Louise Penny paints with words

I'm coming up for air after nearly a month of obsessive listening to Ralph Cosham as he and author Louise Penny lured me into the mythical village of Three Pines, Quebec. I feel like I know Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, Peter and Clara Morrow, eccentric poet Ruth Zardo, and other fictional characters better than I know some of my friends – most don't listen to audiobooks so I doubt they'll be reading this anyway.

Penny writes like a painter, and Cosham is the only possible reader who could translate her brush strokes into sound. I have listened under the covers when I know I have to get up early the next morning, in the car waiting to meet a friend to go cross country skiing when normally I would do a lap around Stake Lake while I waited.  I've gluttonously grabbed at five minutes here and two minutes there for just another taste of the story – they are just that good. I know there is another reader, Adam Sims, who read another version of Bury Your Dead, and no offense to him, but it's Cosham or nothing for me!

So far there are eight books to this series, beginning with Still Life and ending with The Beautiful Mystery, and they need to be listened to in order as the greater story builds through each book. Another book is due this summer and I'm trying to find enough things to distract me until it arrives. I may need to take a week's worth of holidays in solitude so I'm not interrupted when it comes out. The final scene of the most recent book, The Beautiful Mystery, was so shocking and heart wrenching that sleeping may be difficult until I know what happens next. These are not gory murder mysteries, they are more about the people than the blood, much like P.D. James, who I also admire. In fact, Chief Inspector Gamache and Adam Dalgleish would likely be very good friends if they knew each other.

Trust me, if you love a good mystery, a good story, and a passionate look at the humanity in the world around us, just go get the books.

I got some of the books from Library to Go (why they don't buy an entire series is beyond me), and some on disc at the library.

 

Since Audible and the publishers don't seem to be including embeddable links for sound bites, I have a different treat - a Youtube video of an audio excerpt (I know, weird) from the fifth book - Bury Your Dead.

 

Click here for a soundbite.

 

Listen Up!

 

Still Life, (9 hrs, 30 min), Blackstone Audio, 2006

A Fatal Grace (a.k.a Dead Cold), (10 hrs, 30 min), Blackstone Audio, 2007
The Cruelest Month, (12 hrs), Blackstone Audio, 2008
A Rule Against Murder (a.k.a. The Murder Stone), (11 hrs), Blackstone Audio, 2009
The Brutal Telling, (13 hrs), Blackstone Audio, 2009
Bury Your Dead, (13 hrs), MacMillan Audio, 2010
A Trick of the Light, (11 hrs, 43 min), MacMillan Audio, 2011
The Beautiful Mystery, (13 hrs), Blackstone Audio, 2012

The Rook – Indescribably fun!

I had The Rook by Daniel O'Malley downloaded for quite awhile and I'm not sure where or exactly when I acquired it – bit of a mystery. In a moment where I was between the audiobooks I had been waiting for I decided to give this a try. It was a shocking delight! I had heard nothing about this book, and had no idea what I was in for. It isn't very often I read or listen to a book where I can't anticipate what's going to happen next. In The Rook I was constantly surprised at where the story took me and its cast of slightly supernatural freakish characters who work and live within a cutthroat world of corporate operatives. Well over a month after I finished listening to it I'm still lying awake at night thinking about it.

"The body you are wearing used to be mine." As an opening line, this worked very well – I was more than a bit shocked. Susan Duerden, a reader I'd heard grace one of my favourite audiobooks of all time – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, has this pleasing and captivating voice that instantly lured me in. She perfectly matches the ironic sense of humour that lead character Myfanwy Thomas (rhymes with Tiffany) carries throughout the book. She is the perfect voice to express the "What the fuck?" attitude that drives Myfanwy through the story.

Myfanwy awakes in a park in London, in the pouring rain, with a black eye and surrounded by dead bodies who are all wearing surgical gloves... and absolutely no memory of who she is. How could I not keep listening? She discovers a letter in her pocket, supposedly from her former self, and follows the instructions it lays out. Once she recovers her wits in a hotel under an alias prearranged by her former self, she continues reading the letter from her pocket. She discovers her previous self has left her two options. For option A she goes to a certain bank, opens a large safe deposit box and safely (presumably) escapes to a new life and new identity in a foreign country. Option B has her going to the same bank, opening a different safe deposit box, and finding out who the bloody hell did this to her.

It turns out Myfanwy is a high ranking official in a supersecret British organization called the Chequy (pronounced Shek-ay) that reminds me a bit of Men in Black, but less secret agent and more dull corporate. Instead of dealing with aliens from other planets, however, they deal supernatural freaks from right here on earth. Some of those freaks, who seem pretty normal in the Chequy world, even work as part of the organization. Did you know that a certain percentage of men who routinely wear hats are wearing them to cover horns? I had no idea! Myfanwy herself has some odd quirks (hence the latex gloves on the people who tried to kill her – and ended up dead).

Officials in the Chequy take on the title of chess pieces. There are two Rooks, two Bishops, a King and Queen, and a whole lot of Pawns (you can guess what happens to a lot of them). Myfanwy is a Rook (referred to within the organization as Rook Thomas) with an incredible talent for organizing, budgeting, and sitting in an office doing paperwork.

I'm not going to tell you more because if you're not already hooked you never will be, and if you do read it I wouldn't want to spoil any of the delightful surprises that await you!

The Rook is author Daniel O'Malley's first, and hopefully not last, book. I desperately want a sequel! He has a web page and a blog that is too infrequently updated for my liking (I know, a bit of the pot calling the kettle black here!). As I mentioned before, Susan Duerden is an outstanding reader who makes you feel like she's sharing a great secret story with you – like you're inside the inner circle of the characters. I've loved her storytelling in two books now (The Rook and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society), and she rescued a third – a juvenile that I think was poorly written and I haven't covered in this blog.

I can't recommend this book enough. Although it comes in at a whopping 17 hours, it's the kind of audiobook I'd sneak five minutes here or there to listen to more of. Usually I listen when I'm on long drives to work or other places. It's also the first time I listened to an MP3 version on my new Samsung Galaxy SIII phone – not doing that again – too weird getting calls and trying to coordinate my hands free blue tooth, etc. From now on, my fabulous phone is not for audiobooks! Plus, they only play MP3s... what's with that??? The selection is too limited.

 

The Rook is not available on Library To Go but if you live in the TNRD I have ordered the audio and print versions for my library. If you're not in the TNRD - beg your own library to get it! or buy it from Audible - it's worth it!

 

You can listen to a sample here but it doesn't look like I can embed samples from Audible anymore - I'll keep pursuing it.

 

 

Listen Up!

The Rook, (17 hrs, 51 mins), Hachette Audio, 2012