Sound Commentary - Your Wise Guide to Audiobooks and Audio Book Reviews

*Alexander McCall Smith. Corduroy Mansions. Read by Simon Prebble. 9 CDs. 11.75 hrs. Recorded Books. 2010. 978-1-4407-5004-5. Library Edition.

Corduroy mansions (originally serialized in the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper) is an imagined special small apartment building in the comfortable, quaint district of Pimlico in London. McCall-Smith visits each of the flats and their residents and, as always charmingly, relates trials and tribulations between them and others. The vignettes are amusing, poignant, very real, and occasionally even outrageously funny. William French is an insecure, bumbling middle-aged, knowledgeable wine merchant who wants his flat to himself but can't seem to unload his 24-year-old, free-loading son Eddie who doesn't work, is only a taker, and is in general obnoxious. William's friend caterer (i.e. cook) Marcia (who sees William as husband material) suggests he get a dog, as Eddie happens to hate dogs; so William adopts Freddie de la Hay, a very special dog. Another flat is occupied by 4 youngish working women, one of whom is the secretary to an absolutely awful, tactless, thoughtless Lib Dem Member of Parliament appropriately named Oedipus Snark. Snark is so awful his mother, a psychiatrist, is writing his biography to totally vent her justifiable disenchantment with even her own son. Yet another character who heads up a successful literary agency that uses the daily char as a reader of manuscripts (she has a special knack) views him as husband material until, finally, she doesn't. This is escapist fare of the best sort, designed to bring a smile, even a laugh out loud reaction and even a tear now and then, and McCall Smith succeeds brilliantly. The accomplished audio reader British born Simon Prebble succeeds brilliantly with the light mood, tone, pace and timing as he gently voices all the men, women, up and down the social scale, even with an Eastern accented resident as well. His broad stage and televison acting experience makes this truly special. Listeners will eagerly await the sequel.

By Jean Palmer

Jean Palmer was a librarian in a public library, then a librarian/educator at the largest private high school library in the US. She also wrote and edited audiobook reviews at KLIATTand many other national and local newspapers and magazines. She is, of course, an audiobook fanatic and, along with Fran Levitov, a founding co-editor of SoundCommentary.com.