Publisher Description
There’s a village an hour from London. It’s no different from many others today: one pub, one church, redbrick cottages, some public housing, and a few larger houses dotted about. Voices rise up, as they might anywhere, speaking of loving and needing and working and dying and walking the dogs. This village belongs to the people who live in it, to the land and to the land’s past. It also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort, a mythical figure local schoolchildren used to draw as green and leafy, choked by tendrils growing out of his mouth, who awakens after a glorious nap. He is listening to this twenty-first-century village, to its symphony of talk: drunken confessions, gossip traded on the street corner, fretful conversations in living rooms. He is listening, intently, for a mischievous, ethereal boy whose parents have recently made the village their home: Lanny.
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“This extraordinary audiobook, performed by a quartet of talented narrators, will have listeners devouring its fabulist story while wishing it would never end. The one-of-a-kind Dead Papa Toothwort…is brought to menacing life by David Timson’s deep, raspy timbre and deliberate phrasing. Listeners hear forest sounds as Dead Papa Toothwort travels to the village edge to listen to a stream of conversational snippets vocalized in a spectacular array of accents and inflections. Dead Papa Toothwort’s favorite is Lanny, whose sweet nature and acute intelligence are portrayed by Clare Corbett. For Lanny’s mother, she employs a bright voice and nervous expression. The tension is almost unbearable when Lanny goes missing. An unforgettable listen. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
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AudioFile
About Max Porter
Max Porter is the author of several books, including Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize and The Sunday Times / Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize.
About the Narrators
Annie Aldington was born in South London, studied at the Guildford School of Acting, and followed her drama training with a degree in community theater. She has worked in television, radio, voice-over, and in the theater, acting in roles such as Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It and as the distrait housewife in Dario Fo’s Female Parts. She has also formed a company with three other members, writing and performing comedy sketches for television and radio.
Clare Corbett, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, studied at the Welsh College of Music and Drama. After winning the Carlton Hobbs audition, she was chosen to be on BBC Radio. After leaving BBC she went on to narrate several children’s books, including Over the Moon, I Rule Dogsbottom School, and Boy Beware. She has transitioned into reading young adult novels, including many installments in the Doctor Who series.
David Timson is an actor, voice actor, and playwright. He is best known for his narration of The Complete Sherlock Holmes audiobook, in which he voices all 125 characters in the Holmes novels and short stories. His narrations have earned eight AudioFile Earphones Award.
Jot Davies is a television and voice actor who has recorded dozens of audiobooks, including Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma and multiple works by Charles Cumming and Paul Strathern. His acting credits include roles in the television shows Casualty, New Tricks, and Hotel Babylon, as well as the video game Haze.