cover image Us

Us

David Nicholls, read by David Haig. HarperAudio, , unabridged, 12 CDs, 14 hrs., $44.99 ISBN 978-0-06-236848-5

Haig’s performance of Nicholls’s comic novel is nearly a one-trick pony; he voices the main character, Douglas Petersen, with verve, humor, and more sensitivity than Douglas likely deserves. But for almost every other character—with the notable exception of Douglas’s teen son Albie, who is voiced like an idiot until the novel’s climax—Haig’s narration is one-size-fits-all, with little variation from one character to the next. But therein lies the performance’s simple genius, because it perfectly reflects the limited way in which the highly analytical Douglas views the world. His inability to understand other people’s emotions or motivations is the crux of the story. He loves his wife, Connie, but is baffled by her artistic temperament and by the fact that she’s just announced, after over two decades of marriage, that she’s planning to leave him as soon as their epic family holiday to Europe is over. He’s relentlessly critical of his son in scenes that make the listener cringe for Albie’s humiliations, but that are understandable voiced so well from Douglas’s point of view. Overall, this is a fine performance by Haig, a British character actor perhaps best known for playing Bernard in Four Weddings and a Funeral. [em]A Harper hardcover. (Nov.) [/em]