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Title: The Red House

Author: Mark Haddon

Narrator: Maxwell Caulfield

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-23-14

Publisher: Random House Audiobooks

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

From the bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and A Spot of Bother comes a superb book about family and secrets. Two families. Seven days. One house. Angela and her brother Richard have spent twenty years avoiding each other. Now, after the death of their mother, they bring their families together for a holiday in a rented house on the Welsh border.

Four adults and four children. Seven days of shared meals, log fires, card games and wet walks. But in the quiet and stillness of the valley, ghosts begin to rise up. The parents Richard thought he had. The parents Angela thought she had. Past and present lovers. Friends, enemies, victims, saviours.

Once again Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and A Spot of Bother, has written a novel that is funny, poignant and deeply insightful about human lives.

Members Reviews:

Badly narrated

This book demanded a very competent narrater due the complex and almost poetic nature of the text. Unfortunately, Caufield is so bad I am contempleting returning the book.

I cannot believe Haddon has approved this and he should demand that it is re-narrated.

At least listen to the sample before you even consider buying.

Sorry!

"There's now't so queer as folk"

I enjoyed this wry insight into family life. Haddon gets inside people's thoughts - sometimes people like us, but also some that we might have met, but wish we hadn't. I guess he's best known for the thoughts of the autistic hero of The Curious Incident. The ground covered here is closer to "normality." That said, put a couple of buttoned-up English families into a holiday let in Herefordshire and quite a lot of autistic thoughts and behaviours can emerge. What we learn of the family members is by turns tragic, funny and occasionally moving.

It's a tricky book to narrate because there's a lot of dialogue, making it easy to miss-cue which character is speaking. Maxwell Caulfield takes a little longer than I would like to get into it - but don't be put off because overall he does a decent job. The book isn't as startlingly original as Curious Incident but is nonetheless a really good read which I preferred to his "Spot of Bother"

Not what I hoped for.

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

It would have been better told as a straightforward narrative. The somewhat experimental format did not work for me, though I think it might have been easier to read than to listen to.

What was most disappointing about Mark Haddons story?

I found it very disjointed, just a series of short scenes, seemingly unconnected. There was often little indication of which characters were involved. It needed a proper narrative thread.

What didnt you like about Maxwell Caulfields performance?

He didn't do anything to differentiate between the different characters. There were also some very odd pronunciations, and oddly phrased sentences.