Foulsham

Iremonger Trilogy, Book 2

By: Edward Carey

Narrated by: Ben Allen, Bea Holland

In the aptly named borough of Foulsham, Grandfather Umbitt Iremonger has found a way of making everyday objects assume human shape, and turning real people into objects. Lucy Pennant has been discarded as a clay button, abandoned in the Heaps. Meanwhile, Clod has been turned into a gold coin and is being passed as currency through the town. Everywhere people are searching for Clod, who, it is believed, has the power to bring the mighty Umbitt down.

©2014 Edward Carey (P)2016 W.F. Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

"Iremonger torques and tempers our memories of Dickensian London into a singularly jaunty and creepy tale of agreeable misfits." (Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked)

Excellent

This is the second in a series, this was a fun charming book with fanciful characters. The narration was spot on!

The narrators did their best

But they couldn't overcome the unevenness of the writing. I read the first book in the series - it had some issues, but the world was intriguing. This book desperately needed an editor. While I understand that Clod constantly hears the voices of the things, that repetition was out of control in this book. Climactic scenes took too long to unfold (a scene where someone was on the brink of destruction, with the "weapon" inches from him, but then there was a full 3 minutes of conversation with and between things while the would-be destroyer apparently just cooled his heels). Characters make drastic changes in personality and motivations, sometimes even within a single scene. I kept hanging in, hoping things would get back on track, but after a while it seemed to deliberately slow down even more, as though there was a third book in mind, but not enough narrative to fill it. I really wanted to like this, but it became unlistenable. How unlistenable? I quit only an hour from the end because I absolutely did not care what happened next. Especially since I was sure it would involve Lucy Pennant endlessly repeating her own name.