Entirely about the narrator.

Nothing about the book here, only the listen, because I want to warn people.

First: I did not realise it was a graphic novel until I was about forty minutes in. Forty minutes! In my defence the app does not exactly shout about it, and the narrator is so good that it simply never occurred to me that I was missing anything visual. It was only when she said something about a panel that I stopped, put my shopping down in the middle of the aisle and looked up what I was actually listening to.

Second, though, and this is the part I keep telling people: it works anyway. She has a voice that sits somewhere between telling you a story and telling you off, and she does the child version and the adult version with the same accent but about ten years of difference in the weight of it. I could not tell you her name, I've looked it up twice and it goes straight out of my head, and I would follow her onto anything.

Speed matters here. I started at my usual 1.5 and everything landed slightly wrong, too clipped, all the pauses eaten. Dropped to 1.15 and it was a different recording. The pauses are doing a lot of the work and if you squeeze them you get nothing.

It's short, five and a bit hours, so no loan drama for once, no 3am disappearance, no rejoining anything. I finished it with nine days to spare and then sat there feeling slightly cheated that I hadn't had to fight for it.

Eight. Listen to it, then get the actual object out as well, because apparently there are pictures.