If you can picture Jennifer as a Scottish philosopher with an adult niece, you will be much closer to "reality" than I have been. So, in order to give some perspective to a new listener, I want to point out that Isabel is actually about the same age as, say, Jennifer Aniston. This didn't matter so much in the beginning, but later in the series it does, and the image I've had all this time is hard for me to shake now. Smith is a wonderful actress and attractive, but she is much too old to be Isabel Dalhousie. I'm sure it was to do with the accent and Isabel's personality, combined with the roles I've seen Maggie Smith play. When I first started listening to these books, the picture of Isabel that formed in my mind was actually Maggie Smith, circa Harry Potter. The reason I decided to review this one is that, being the first book in the series, a new listener might look at these reviews first and I wanted to make a suggestion. They remind me more of the 44 Scotland Street books, of which Audible does not have the complete series, so I had to find another. I originally thought they would be mysteries, but they're not really, although usually there is something odd going on that Isabel is trying to sort out. I have loved them all and will be listening to the rest of them, as well. I'm currently listening to book 5 in this series. Should he go on anyway? What would you do? Maybe go back to what worked? Or plod on for whatever reason? Such a quandary he must be in. He also knows of his readers' response to this new series. So what's he to do? If he pays attention to the reviews, he knows of his own success with Botswana. It's not the same feeling transposed in a new place. I was curious then, when I read that the next one was actually going to be a whole new, totally different series. It was the feeling of it all that mattered most, and I would read the next one if it is written. It was all the characters, the new and the renewed. It wasn't the plot of each that mattered. When I think back through all those books it's hard to distinguish one from another. Her voice, her pronunciation, her narration was music. The narrator cemented all that came before. It was even released before the print version, which astonished the bookseller. When I was browsing in a bookstore and came upon the last, The Full Cupboard of Life on audio CD, I bought it immediately.
I read the next and the next and the next. I read The Number One Ladies Detective Agency and I was hooked.
0 kommentar(er)
