12:57 pm Jul. 17, 2012
For ten days, we'll be suggesting some of our favorite audiobooks for the summer, in a series of articles brought to you by our partner, Audible.com.
Audible.com is promoting a special offer to download one our selections or a selection of your own for free, plus a free 30-day trial membership.
Click the link at the bottom of this post for details. Previously: Everything That Rises Must Converge.
Click here to see the books we've recommended so far.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Unabridged)
By John Le Carré
Narrated by Michael Jayston
If you were a watcher of the incredible 1979 miniseries version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," there's a recognizable voice in this, the preeminent audiobook version of the original novel: British actor Michael Jayston, who you'll recognize as the guy who plays the Circus' head of "scalp hunters," Peter Guillem.
Here, he combines his talents as a prolific reader of audiobooks and his connection to the John Le Carré franchise to great effect.
What better voice to deliver the dry, brooding, suspenseful story? Without melodrama, and without understatement either, he delivers the prose of the master spy novelist. A friend of mine who has watched the series and read the book several times tells me she never really, deeply understood the plot in all its intricacy until it was read aloud to her by Jayston.
As for the rest of it, you know just why you want to hear this audiobook this summer. It's got all the pleasures of what people call a "beach read" with surprisingly little guilt: Le Carré, as the world is now willing to admit, is a first-rate novelist who easily transcends the genre.
