At the start of A Single Man, George Falconer wakes up at home in the morning and drags himself despondently to the bathroom. There he stares at himself in the mirror, observing not so much a face as “the expression of a predicament … a dull harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle”.
Set in 1962, Christopher Isherwood’s landmark novel follows a day in the life of a 58-year-old British expat and college professor living in California. George is silently trying to come to terms with the death of his partner, Jim, after a car accident. We accompany him from his morning ablutions – during which he reflects on the judgment of his homophobic neighbour Mrs Strunk – and his drive to work, to a teaching session, a gym workout and a drink with his friend Charley. Throughout we are privy to his internal monologue, which reveals George as a man prone to existential dread and who is isolated in a world that, owing to his sexuality, regards him with suspicion.
This is a new recording with actor Alex Jennings (The Crown, A Very English Scandal) as narrator. In his clipped RP tones, he delivers a performance that hums with melancholy and buried rage. As we bear witness to George’s every waking thought, action and memory, we understand the dissociative properties of grief and the masks people wear that allow them to get through the day.
Available via Naxos Audiobooks, 4hr 38min
Further listening
Winter
Ali Smith, Penguin Audio, 7hr 16min
Bridgerton’s Adjoa Andoh reads the second in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet. Partially inspired by Dickens, it tells of Sophia Cleves, a modern-day Scrooge living in a large house in Cornwall whose only company is a ghostly vision of a child’s head.
Flesh
David Szalay, Penguin Audio, 9hr 25min
This Booker prize-winning novel traces the life of a working-class Hungarian man from his teens to middle age. After meeting István as a 15-year-old boy, we follow him as he joins the military and then moves to London to work for the super-rich. Read by actor Daniel Weyman.
