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Spoken Word

The End of the Affair

Christina Hardyment
Friday 13 August 1999 23:00 BST
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The End of the Affair Read by Michael Kitchen, Chivers, c.6hrs 30mins, £14.95

The End of the Affair Read by Michael Kitchen, Chivers, c.6hrs 30mins, £14.95

WRITTEN IN 1951, this classic novel by Graham Greene touches nerves that we have almost forgotten we had: raising as it does, with disquieting insistence, questions of loyalty and belief and their relation to love. Maurice Bendrix finds himself drawn back into an unresolved affair by an accidental meeting, only to discover not only had it never in reality ended, but that his rival is neither a jealous husband or another lover, but God. Listening to the story unfolding with inexorable sadness and elegance is like hearing a Haydn symphony; the characters enter, interlace and exit, each lost in their own perception of the world, until finally and tragically the loose ends are all caught up and neatly tied off.

Two For The Dough Read by Lorelei King, Macmillan, 3hrs, £8.99

JANET EVANOVICH's disaster-prone heroine Stephanie Plum is one of the best new characters of the modern school of zany female PI thrillers. Two For The Dough is the sequel to One For The Money; Three To Get Deadly and Four To Score are also available on audio. If you are already a fan of Evanovich's books, you may find the abridged versions frustrating - every word of her snap-happy dialogue of New Jersey wisecracks is so toothsome. But Lorelei King's reading is quite excellent, bringing to life Plum's ever-developing and ever more eccentric family. Two For The Dough introduces her grandmother, kitted out in admiring emulation of her grand-daughter in Doc Martens, and toting a Colt 45 in her handbag.

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