Oh, Play That Thing cover art

Oh, Play That Thing

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Oh, Play That Thing

By: Roddy Doyle
Narrated by: Christian Conn
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.


It's 1924, and New York is the centre of the universe.

Henry Smart, on the run from Dublin, falls on his feet. He is a handsome man with a sandwich board, behind which he stashes hooch for the speakeasies of the Lower East Side. He catches the attention of the mobsters who run the district and soon there are eyes on his back and men in the shadows. It is time to leave, for another America...

Chicago is wild and new, and newest of all is the music.

Furious, wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. His music is everywhere, coming from every open door, every phonograph. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his colour; there are places a black man cannot go, things he cannot do. Armstrong needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.


© Roddy Doyle 2004 (P) Penguin Audio 2010

 Fiction Historical Fiction

Critic reviews

Sequels often disappoint, but here is one that's every bit as sharp, as surprising and as satisfying as the original.
Doyle's performance is, again, extraordinary for the richness of allusion, the facility with which history is dovetailed with invention, the energy of the prose.
Brilliantly imagined... Utterly magnificent, the finest work he has done.
Kicks off at a furious lick and just gets faster, hotter, louder. Hugely, unremittingly entertaining.
All stars
Most relevant
great story, read a star called henry and was looking forward to finding out what happened to henry unfortunatly the narrator distroyed the book for me, stopped listening after an hour just couldnt take anymore going to buy kindle edition instead

great story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Irish accents are off-puttingly bad, although the American accents are good so assuming that's the trade-off.

Accents

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The narration is brutal. The Irish accent is difficult to carry; and surely enough Irish actors to pick from.

Brutal performance

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I had previously read the trilogy so revisiting the trilogy in audio book. the first book is perfect with Roddy narrating, the accent is this is absolutely terrible, it's like a cross between Tom Cruises irish accent in Far and Away and Jamaican. I couldn't listen to anymore of it!!

Accent ruined the audio book!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
really confusing story, couldn't follow it at all. possibly would have been easier if I'd read it rather than listened to it.
the narrator had the worse Irish accent I've ever heard!
I loved A star called Henry but I wish I hadn't bothered with this one!

confusing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.