High Fidelity
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High Fidelity
Narrated by:
Russell Tovey
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Russell Tovey
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By:
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Nick Hornby
About this listen
In celebration of it's 20th anniversary, Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby, read by Russell Tovey.
Nick Hornby's first novel, an international bestseller and instantly recognized by critics and readers alike as a classic, helps to explain men to women, and men to men. Rob is good on music: he owns a small record shop and has strong views on what's decent and what isn't. But he's much less good on relationships. In fact, he's not at all sure that he wants to commit himself to anyone. So it's hardly surprising that his girlfriend decides that enough is enough.
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Critic reviews
Leaves you believing not only in the redemptive power of music but above all the redemptive power of love
A triumphant first novel. True to life and moving
Extremely cleverly observed
An instant classic
Fast, fun, and remarkably deft: a sharp-edged portrait that manages at once to be vicious, generous, and utterly good-natured
So, the plot: thirty something Rob Fleming, owner of an independent record Shop called 'Championship Vinyl' in Archway, North London, teaches a crunch point on his life when his live-in girlfriend, lawyer Laura leaves him. Cue, heartbreak, introspection and a whole load of 'top 5' lists in that typically male autistic way.
Russell Tovey is an appalling narrator; the worst I'd heard so far in my experience of Audible titles. He places pauses in the wrong places, his vocal cadence is all over the place and he's got a grating tone. I therefore will be avoiding all other titles narrated by him.
Warning: there's a fair amount of swearing in this book, more than I recall really. It's worth noting if you're playing the title out loud at home.
High Fidelity Twenty (One) Years On
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Simply great
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Best narrator
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Any additional comments?
... but he does come close.His Rob is good (it took a little while to get used to, as I adore both the book and the film and they're all jumbled up in my mind having read and seen them 5+ times each) if perhaps sounding a little too much like Russell Tovey himself rather than the character. His team at Championship Vinyl are also good, although Barry is overdone meaning that his first line of "Twist and Shout" in the last chapter is horribly incongruous with the following "and Barry can SING".
Yet like the unfortunate minority of narrators - but the majority of the ones I didn't like - he can't do the voices of the opposite gender well. Laura doesn't sound that different from Rob, and Marie sounds exactly like my mental image of an overenthusiastic drag queen, which almost made me give up on the audiobook.
Of course, High Fidelity has the singular honour of simultaneously being positioned in both my top 5 books and my top 5 films ever since I first read it at about 13/14 and saw it when I was 15/16, so I was never going to go easy on a narrator. That also means that there was never a chance of me giving the story anything less than a full five-star rating, and I think I might even have enjoyed the story - my first time re-encountering it in my 30s - even more than I did in my teens or twenties.
But Russell Tovey was wrong, oh so horribly wrong, as a choice for narrator, and while I've flickered between 2 stars and 3 for the narration, I didn't give up on it and enjoyed the story - with occasion cringes, especially as the vocalisation of Barry and Marie - to the end. It's a 2.5 star narration, rounded to 3 for audible, and sadly brings the 5 star story down to a 4-star rating overall.
Russell Tovey fails to ruin an outstanding book...
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Brilliant!
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