Three audiobooks for the first third of November

November is already one-third done, my goodness (the end of year season is pressing hard at our heels already!)

It's been a moderately, but not excessively, busy month thus far, and it has encompassed the consumption of five books - two in print, but three in audiobook. The audio format has really opened up a world for me; I'm loving the opportunity to absorb more stories even with other commitments are high.

Each of the three audiobooks I have listened to have been good in their own way, and one was a close to perfect banger. See notes below.

I have been told by many people to read this one for ages, but I hung back because memoir isn't my bag, and I especially don't jive usually with entertainment industry memoirs, so I thought this would be a bit dull. My kids watched iCarly back in the day (although not the spin-off show) and I remember vaguely thinking it was pretty trash. If you had ever told me back then that one day I would be laughing and crying my way through one of the best memoirs I have ever read from one of its teenage stars, I would've rolled my eyes so hard they dislocated.

And...

I was completely, unequivocally, wrong. 

This is at once gutting and frequently funny, insightful and awful, self-aware and excruciating, writing. McCurdy's life story is both appalling and incredibly human, and nothing I have ever read has highlighted the brutality of childhood emotional abuse rooted in parental narcissism more. McCurdy's mother, while obviously carrying wounds of her own, really lived out the Phillip Larkin poem This is the Verse:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

It's hard not to agree with the title, at the end, and wish McCurdy every health and happiness on her ongoing journey away from the ruins of her lost childhood. Outstanding book. 9.5/10

This is a cosy mystery set on a generation ship headed for humanity's new home (wherever that may be).

In the tradition of cosies, regardless of setting, hard ethical questions are hand-waved away and no one seems to have any real trauma, despite the fact that the situation in which this remnant human population finds itself should have everyone screaming and at least 80% insane. 

The world-building wasn't strong enough (for me as a reader) to ignore the central fundamental implausibility of the setting, and I found that to be a weakness of the book, albeit possibly a function of the length (this is a tiny wee story).

That said, I enjoyed the character and voice of the narrator-protagonist, Dorothy Gentleman, and I thought the mystery plot was decent - not outstanding, but fairly presented and internally consistent. I got through it super quickly and I liked it, and I'll probably read the next one in the series when it comes out. 6.5/10

This story collection, by the author of Our Wives Under the Sea (my favourite horror book of the past decade, although in perfect fairness I must state that I don't read a lot of horror) was engrossing, at times moving, and consistently strong. Armfield's voice is contemplative and cool, and the horror, while certainly there (quite a lot of it body horror) is understated and conveyed mostly in suggestion rather than explicit viscera.

Like in any collection, I had stories I liked more than others, although I wouldn't say there were any really weak stories. The three stand-outs for me were: 

- The Great Awake, an oddly gentle and haunting piece where some people's sleep lifts away from them and becomes a separate shadow entity; 

- Formerly Feral, the most obviously allegorical story in the collection (wildness / ferality = female empowerment) which deals with a girl whose stepsister, Helen, is a wolf; and 

- Salt Slow (the book closer), which is a climate apocalypse horror set in a drowned world, and intimately interrogates the underlying fear / horror that can inflict some people during pregnancy.

Overall, this was a great read, and I'd recommend it not just to horror fans but to anyone who enjoys spec fiction more generally. 8.5/10.