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After a blow on the head, seventeen year old Joe Harding
makes his way back home, but home is gone. His house is inhabited
by an aggressive stranger who tells Joe to flee. Unsure what
to do the decision is made for Joe when he is attacked and
driven out of the town. Joe escapes into the countryside,
but it is not a countryside that he recognises. Instead of
the urban sprawl that he was expecting Joe find an England
covered in forests. He is found by The Community. Inside the
community he meets other youngsters, including Kathryn with
whom he falls in love. By the time Joe discovers that he has
somehow fallen into a parallel world, he is determined to
stay with Kathryn; however fate has a way of derailing his
wishes...
Out of Time is the audio book of the novel by Ruth
Boswell. The book runs for an impressive three hundred and
fifty minutes, spread over five discs, and is narrated by
Staten Eliot.
Boswell holds a special place in the hearts of gentleman of
a certain age. When I was a young lad a program came on that
just blew me away. Certainly there had been Science Fiction
on the television, but apart for Doctor Who, anything
of real depth and substance was reserved for the adults. That
was until Timeslip hit the screens. As one of the co-creator,
she produced a programme that did not talk down to its audience.
Boswell's career continued in children's television when she
moved over to produce the first four seasons of The Tomorrow
People. Eventually she moved into adult programming, in
the eighties she worked on Maybury with Patrick Stewart
and in 1997 produced The Uninvited.
Staten Eliot may be a name of which you are unaware of. He
is an up and coming young actor who has previously appeared
in the films The Basement, Camp X-Ray: Ghosts of
Guantanamo Bay and Lycanthropy. He has also appeared
on television in Totally Frank and Trust; and
on stage in The Tempest, The Second Maidens Tragedy
and Life's a Dream. But we don't care about all that,
not if we have to listen to his voice for nearly six hours.
I'm pleased to report that Staten has a most melodious voice
which pulls you into the story. One of the problems with spoken
books is that you can tire of the narrator, but not so with
Staten. His soft hewn voice enchants you.
So what of the story itself? Well, as it is by Boswell, you
know that it's going to be an intelligent tale - Boswell always
told intelligent stories that could be enjoyed by children
and adults alike and this ability shines through in Out
of Time. Although the story is targeted at an adolescent
audience, it has not been limited by this. The descriptive
passages draw you into an England that is known and unknown.
Her characters are pleasantly flawed, making them all the
more human and all the more identifiable.
If you like talking books you could do worse than purchase
this disc set. My only gripe is that there are such long gaps
between new stories from Ruth; hopefully if the book and disc
are successful we may not have to wait so long for the next
offering.
Charles
Packer
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