Narrated by Kevin T. Collins
Check Him Out
Gene Wolfe’s 31st novel.
Gene Wolfe becomes a different writer depending on the story
he wants to tell. Here he wants to involve us in a Mystery set in a Science
Fiction universe. The mystery starts out as “what happened to the money” and
then becomes “who done it?” The SF element is flying cars and androids who
think they are Mystery writers and poets. The android Mystery writer Ernest
Smithe character is wonderful, just wonderful. Pay close attention to the
contrast between his gritty pulp crime-novel thoughts and his third person
Mystery writer speech pattern. Wolfe makes this internal war of words inside
Smithe’s head an on-going gag throughout the novel and is very enjoyable to
follow. Smithe—being an android reconstruction of a famous Mystery writer—should
behave just like the real Ernest Smithe would have; the fact that he does not,
provides much of the intrigue in the book. Just when you think you have Ern
figured out, he will do something surprising. Trying to explain his motivations
kept my interest level high throughout the novel.
I did a Power Read™ on this new Gene Wolfe novel using the
Kindle version. I use this term to indicate reading the text of the book while
listening to the audiobook. I can
recommend this as the best way to assimilate a new novel. It provides two
discrete information pathways into the brain occurring in parallel. It is akin
to reading the book twice. I find that I read faster than the narrator speaks
so my mind has time to process the material just before I hear the narrator
speaking the same words into my ear. This does two things: First, it forces me
to slow down and look at each word—vitally important in a Gene Wolfe book. Secondly,
hearing the narrator forces me to process the words through the auditory part
of my brain and merge then with what I am reading. Often the narrator will
employ a slightly different pronunciation of a word causing that particular word
to receive an extra measure of mental attention. This method does require a
great deal of concentration but every time I have done this I have had a
fantastic experience and was able to comprehend the book being read for the
first time as if I had read it twice.
Kevin T. Collins is the narrator and seems to me to be a
poor choice for the material. He read much too slowly for my taste and I found
his exaggeratedly precise diction to be more of a curse than a blessing. But
there were some blessings. I can honestly compliment Collins for his accurate
reading of the text. In one place one of the character names is misspelled and
Collins reads the misspelled name verbatim. This level of accuracy does help
with proof-reading, and I did manage to find several slight discrepancies
between the Kindle version and the Audible, thanks in part to Collin’s
precision. His reading is so earnest as to be distracting. He does speak in a
slightly different voice for some of the different characters and these help in
differentiating the speaker. This book seems to be written in a sort of tongue-in-cheek
style and could really benefit from a more dramatic performance. The only way I
can recommend Collins’ narration is to read along with the text while
listening. Listening alone to this book would detract from the overall
experience. All the sarcasm and Mystery writer voice-over grittiness is
completely absent from Collins’ narration. You would get more of the true feel
of the book by reading it than by listening to Collins read it to you.
LIST OF TEXTUAL VARIANTS
Chapter / Time / Audible (Kindle ) [Print]
4 / 1:29 / I remembered a great many kitchens but had never actually
been inside a real (learned my way around a modern) [learned my way around
a modern] one.
10 / 4:47 / But things changed and changed but in the end I
(they) did not.
12 / 5:50 / She called him brilliant and a mid-level (minor)
executive
16 / 8:05 / a better one would be Van Petten (van
Petten his boss)
16 / 8:08 / Let’s assume too that Van Patten (van
Patten) was with her in the terminal
16 / 8:06 / Chick called in yesterday not just to tell Van Patten
(van Petten) he’d gotten here.
