Amazing voice talent

Wow! When I first saw the amount of voice actors in this I was surprised - I’m usually a one voice kind of auidobooker, but this book blew me away. Each voice is its own character and narrates its perspective rather than there being a dialogue – which is what I initially thought was going to be the case. The way that the talent was able to convey such a multitude of characters while still feeling individual from each other was astounding. I don’t think I would have liked this book nearly as much as I did if it weren’t for the voice talent.

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Lacking a moral compass

My initial slightly bored response was colored by Erich and his obsessive lust for Maurice which droned on a bit but as the story evolved I understood why this was so important in the set up for later events. Maurice fulfills most of the criteria for psychopathy and is a truly brilliant and loathsome fictional creation, one wonders if Mr Boyne really has come across writers like this in his career. The use of different narrators (reliable or otherwise) for the different parts of the story is refreshing with the best one left for last. Richard E. Grant puts in a showstopper for the final quarter as only he can: wonderful drunken ramblings and deranged delusional fantasies of his own (Maurice's) pure genius. I enjoyed imagining how Gore Vidal would have really responded to a Yorkshire accent if he ever came across one. The scene where the fictional Gore puts Maurice in his place was a beautifully crafted piece of writing. A very clever and revealing novel about the bitchy dog-eat-dog world of publishing fiction.

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Fitting protagonist for this day and age

I listened to this novel without any idea of its storyline, and in spite of my irritation with the aging gay writer’s naïveté and neediness in the first section, I quickly became fascinated and horrified at once with the Maurice Swift character, wondering how far he would go. What a figure for our troubled times, so selfish, calculating and devoid of moral compass.

Thinly disguised porn

Some compelling ideas that could have been really well developed without the constant sexual stream that made this book something I couldn't listen to after 6 or 7 chapters.

Quality Voice

I really enjoyed the primary narrator's English accent. It sounded great and was nice to listen to. The novel dives into some saucy adult scenes that I would not have initially suspected when reading the book description provided by the publisher, but I found it to be an interesting audio experience! I thought that I would make a note of the brief flashes of adult content in case anyone is contemplating purchasing this title as a gift for an underage individual or anyone else who is sensitive to this type of material.

Worth Waiting For

I was in a situation where I had to listen for about five hours (I was driving by myself). It took me about three hours in to get interested. The whole novel is about writers — not my favorite subjects. I like it when writers describe more diverse social milieus. Also it opens with hours of homosexual obsession. I suppose this would interest others. But once it lurches out of that, the novel gets more complicated and offers some surprises. The ending is more drawn out and clever than I’d prefer. Not as good as Since We Fell or Something in the Water, but worth listening to.