Best of March 2011 in Audible.com SFF: Lewis Shiner's Glimpses, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki

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Best of March 2011 in Audible.com SFF: Lewis Shiner's Glimpses, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki

Posted on 2011-03-31 at 09:00 by Sam

Link: Best of March 2011 in Audible.com SFF: Lewis Shiner’s Glimpses, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki

Lewis Shiner’s 1993 novel Glimpses won the 1994 World Fantasy Award, and has been brought to wonderful life by Stefan Rudnicki. It’s a marvelous audiobook, and my pick for the best Science Fiction and Fantasy audiobook release at Audible.com in March 2011.

Onto the publisher’s summary and some glowing blurbs:

Ray Shackleford is trying to deal with the death of his father and the collapse of his marriage when the impossible happens. Music that no one has ever heard before begins to play from his stereo speakers. It is only the first step on a journey that will take him to Los Angeles, London, Cozumel, and points far beyond, and bring him face to face with Jim Morrison, Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix - and his own mortality.

“Shiner couldn’t have written this book without a deeply felt sense of the fragility of art, of how many great works have passed into the ages never to enlighten, inform, or entertain new generations. Though the masterworks he conjures up in such exquisite detail are lost to us, we now have a bit of compensation for their absence: a masterpiece of the imagination called Glimpses.” (Richard Foss, Los Angeles Reader)

“Glimpses has the raw power of a documentary, a nitty-gritty, minute-by-minute evocation of a highly personal journey. Glimpses captures the sixties perfectly—I was there, and it was the way Shiner writes it.” (Dr. Timothy Leary)

“Shiner writes with intense feeling about the music Ray loves and the turmoil he endures. The novel sparkles with painfully perfect evocations of the yearning, anomie and need that wrack Ray, yielding a story of uncommon sensitivity, insight and redemptive power.” (Publisher’s Weekly)

Onto my review: “Moving, Remembering, and Being: This is a wonderful book about a late 80s stereo repairman (Ray) who discovers that he can, through some kind of power of imagination and love of music, actually cause lost albums to come to be. A musical trip through the late 60s (The Beatles, The Doors, Brian Wilson) as Ray re-lives both his own youth and the time and character of the musicians who made the music which provided the soundtrack to a tumultuous era. In the present, Ray is dealing with the death of his distant father, the tenuous threads which hold his marriage together, and coming to terms and some form of understanding with both. Stefan Rudnicki’s narration is (as always) rich and resonant, capturing’s Ray’s voice and grounding the book in a dry, gravelly bass which suits it perfectly. This is an authentic book of a time that was and of timeless music that almost was, and true human characters moving between them. I enthusiastically recommend it.”

ALSO IN MARCH:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

Note: this post is back-dated from June 21, 2011, for sort order purposes.

Posted in link | Tagged audible.com, best-of-audible.com