Sukey's Favorite

On Chesil Beach
By Ian McEwan
Random House AudioBooks, $29.95
4.5 hours unabridged, CD
ISBN 9780739343715

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It's no surprise that On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan's latest novel, is masterful, beautifully written and very affecting. What is surprising is that McEwan is a brilliant performer of his own brilliant work. His unhurried tempo and smooth, quietly nuanced, quasi-detached delivery mirrors his elegant prose, belying the catastrophic emotional intensity of his two struggling characters on one fateful night. Edward and Florence, just married that morning, are in the honeymoon suite on Chesil Beach. It's 1962, but for these two it seems more like 1862—"They were young, educated and both virgins on this their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible." As they toy with their overcooked beef and veg, both anticipating the next "event" in very different ways, they reveal themselves to us, she a dedicated, talented violinist, he a country boy, newly graduated with a first in history, both sure that this marriage, this night will make them free and grown-up. What happens? Well, you'll be there up-close and upset, then a bit removed, looking back with just a touch of what-could-have-been nostalgia. It's a small gem of a novel, perfectly rendered as an audio presentation.

A knotted tale

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

If you're young, bright, talented as both a maker and designer of intricate rugs, filled with a limitless desire to master the art of Persian carpets, what can stop you from reaching the top of the craft? In early 18th-century Iran, it was the irremediable problem of being born female. But for the appealing, strong-willed heroine (never named) of Anita Amirrezvani's dazzling debut novel, The Blood of Flowers, set in Isfahan in the time of the great Shah Abbas (1588-1629), designing and knotting exquisite rugs is what drives and centers her life as she battles hunger, poverty, the disgrace of a temporary marriage (really an exchange of sexual favors for money) and her own all-too-familiar adolescent brashness. In a low, lush, Persian-petaled voice worthy of Scheherazade, reader Shohreh Aghdashloo takes us into the exotic world Amirrezvani has created, into grand houses and garbage-strewn hovels, teeming bazaars and steaming women's baths and into the intricacies of creating carpets fit for a queen. Every chapter ends with a charming folktale, grace notes to a story that sweeps you up and holds you in its thrall.


Murder down under

Peter Temple's deceptively simple prose style fools you, at least it fooled me, into thinking that The Broken Shore would be a solid, "just-the-facts-ma'am" crime story, narrated in authentic Aussie by Peter Hosking. But well before the first disc is over, Joe Cashin, a Melbourne detective now back in the small South Australian town he grew up in, begins to intrigue with his hard-nosed, smart-mouthed cynicism and his fondness for opera, Joseph Conrad, dogs and underdogs. As Joe's backstory surfaces—a recent brush with death that's left him with heavy-duty scars, physical and otherwise, a relationship gone sadly south, his father's suicide—so do Temple's concerns about power, power politics, injustice, prejudice and the loss of wild country to unprincipled developers which he takes on in carefully crafted, intertwined subplots. Cashin's convalescence ends abruptly when a wealthy local is beaten to death and pressure from on-high wants the blame to stay with three marginally involved Aboriginal teens. Investigating without authorization, Joe uncovers the nasty truth and, with it, unexpected horrors.


New Clinton credo

Former President Bill Clinton's new book on citizen activism and public service, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, is being released on September 4 as an unabridged audio, with Clinton himself reading. Bound for instant bestsellerdom.


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