Kingston Noir

By: Colin Channer

Narrated by: Robin Miles, Mirron Willis, Joan Pringle

Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

Launched with the summer '04 award-winning best-seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the geographical area of the book. Original stories by Marlon James, Kwame Dawes, Patricia Powell, Chris Abani, Marcia Douglas, Leone Ross, Kei Miller, Christopher John Farley, Ian Thomson, Thomas Glave, and Colin Channer.

From "Trench Town" to "Half Way Tree" to "Norbrook" to "Portmore" and beyond, the stories of Kingston Noir shine light into the darkest corners of this fabled city. Joining award-winning Jamaican authors such as Marlon James, Leone Ross, and Thomas Glave are two "special guest" writers with no Jamaican lineage: Nigerian-born Chris Abani and British writer Ian Thomson. The menacing tone that runs through some of these stories is counterbalanced by the clever humor in others, such as Kei Miller's "white gyal with a camera", who softens even the hardest of August Town's gangsters; and Mr. Brown, the private investigator in Kwame Dawes' story, who explains why his girth works to his advantage: "In Jamaica, a woman like a big man. She can see he is prosperous, and that he can be in charge." Together, the outstanding tales in Kingston Noir comprise the best volume of short fiction ever to arise from the literary wellspring that is Jamaica.

©2012 Akashic Books (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Fake Jamaican Accent

What didn’t you like about the narrators’s performance?

The narrator had a pseudo Jamaican accent. It was so difficult listening to him that I decided to read the stories without the audio. It did a disservice to the stories, I think, because I listened to the first one and disliked the story immensely. I cringed every time the narrator spoke, especially at certain word: for example, when he said Saint Yago and not saint Jago. That is a well known school in Jamaica, and we pronounce it St Jago--with the J sound. There were many other instances of mispronunciation as well.

Powerful stories , Appalling narration

Kingston Noir is a powerful collection of dark and emotive stories. That said, the producer needs to do better. The story titles and their respective authors NEED to be listed by Audible in the chapter drop down. The narration was dismal. it contained some of the WORST attempts at Jamaican accents I have ever heard. Real place names in Kingston were mispronounced. They clearly had no actual experience of Jamaican culture or the things they were reading and did not consult the authors to enlighten them. Authors' names were mispronounced. Why??? Could Audible not find 2 real Jamaicans to narrate these stories???

Excellent stories despite disrespectful production

Every story was incredible. Unfortunately, the producers that selected the readers didn't contract Jamaicans or readers that are highly proficient speakers of Jamaican patois or readers that studied/learned the Jamaican pronunciation for places and cultural phenomena found in Jamaica. The mispronunciation and inauthentic linguistic rhythm was very distracting and, particularly with the reading of "My Lord", almost made it impossible to continue listening. Suffice it to say, if you are not Jamaican perhaps this will go unnoticed but if you are proficient or fluent in Jamaican patois, you may have a hard time listening to these readers. This was very disappointing but I pushed through simply because the stories were so engaging. All of the disrespectful pronunciation could have been avoided by having culturally competent producers and readers on the job. The rampant mispronunciations of basic things that like the author Kei Miller's first name or street names or culturally specific things like the words "boops" or "duppy" are inexcusable when there are perfectly capable speakers of Jamaican patois in the world to read these stories aloud.