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Title: Communion Town

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Sam Thompson

Narrator: Luke Daniels

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-03-13

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

AudioFile Best Voices - Fiction and Classics, 2014

The Man Booker long-listed novel explores how each of us conjures up our own city. Every city is made of stories: Stories that meet and diverge, stories of the commonplace and the strange, of love and crime, of ghosts and monsters. The iridescent, Man Booker long-listed Communion Town is reminiscent of David Mitchell's Ghostwritten and Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, it is the story of a place that never looks the same way twice: A place imagined anew by each citizen who walks through the changing streets among voices half-heard, signs half-glimpsed and desires half-acknowledged. This is the story of a city.

Critic Reviews:

"Luke Daniels manages not only to capture each narrator's voice but also to give us the voices that would be created by that narrator.... It's a superb reading." (AudioFile)

Members Reviews:

Long- listed for Man Booker Prize but still a trial to get through

I was eager to read Communion Town after learning it was a Man Booker nomination (long listed at this point). It also received considerable praise and attention from the media, including a blurb from Tash Aw on the back cover, an author also once longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Based on the book's description, I expected the novel to focus on a city portrayed from different viewpoints - perhaps culminating in a deeper and intriguing sketch of a place, real or imagined.

Unfortunately, I labored to finish Communion Town. I stuck with it only because I feel uncomfortable reviewing a book without seeing it through. Although less than 300 pages, it felt more like 600.

I did have some hope in the early pages of the first chapter. That one focused on Ulya and Nicolas as they arrived at "the city", a pair "different from the rest." The plot was somewhat understandable at this point as Nicolas and Ulya applied for identity cards and help with finding food and housing.

But even before the chapter's conclusion, it became obscure and indecipherable....and from that point on, the book never came together. I was left wondering: was this novel part realism, part science fiction? Was it meant to be dream- like or mythic? Would the sentences ever lead anywhere coherent? Was there some inherent flow to the book that I was missing?

Whatever it was...it lost me completely.

What city? Good craftsmanship but lacks a strong unifying theme...

No doubt Sam Thompson is a great craftsman -- he gives litte gems of narrative gymnastics, here and there, but the city he attempts to portray from 10 different angles fails to come together. He keeps the city anonymous, only dropping a few hints that this may be Greko-Roman harbor city ("the Nordic look that,it was already obvious, made her conspicuous here."), a gritty, crime and corruption ridden, repressed by fear, and despotically ruled place. He keeps a wide time frame pre-information technology 20th or late 19th century. This vagueness gives may make it "timeless" but it makes it difficult for the reader to make the connections and fill in the gaps and figure what is and what is not possible in this fictional city.

Each storiy has a good set up, nice character developments, but a lot of promising and interesting story premises dry out to a trickle by the end. Perhaps some of the better stories should have been developed into separate short novels.