The Forensic Records Society (Audible Audio Edition) Magnus Mills Tim Bruce Audible Studios for Bloomsbury Books
Download As PDF : The Forensic Records Society (Audible Audio Edition) Magnus Mills Tim Bruce Audible Studios for Bloomsbury Books
"Within a few months we'd witnessed bickering, desertion, subterfuge and rivalry. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that only a miracle could save us now."
Two men with a passion for vinyl create a society for the appreciation of records. Their aim is simple to elevate the art of listening by doing so in forensic detail. The society enjoys moderate success in the back room of their local pub, The Half Moon, with other enthusiasts drawn to the initial promise of the weekly gathering.
However, as the club gains popularity, its founder's uncompromising dogma results in a schism within the movement, and soon a counter group forms. Then the arrival of a young woman called Alice further fractures the unity of the vulnerable society. As rifts are forged and gulfs widen, Magnus Mills examines the surreal nature of ordinary lives. The master of the comic deadpan returns for his ninth novel, a spectacularly disingenuous exploration of power, fanaticism and really, really good records.
The Forensic Records Society (Audible Audio Edition) Magnus Mills Tim Bruce Audible Studios for Bloomsbury Books
Hilarious and sublime.Product details
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The Forensic Records Society (Audible Audio Edition) Magnus Mills Tim Bruce Audible Studios for Bloomsbury Books Reviews
Blaahhhh! The book struck me as an obvious and heavy-handed satire on religion and politics. I immediately thought of the Protestant Reformation beginning with a single group "protesting" Roman Catholicism, but itself inevitably splintering into smaller, conflicting groups. Or maybe Christianity at its start, eventually breaking up into warring factions, or maybe the Russian Revolution, etc.
The author makes his point overly-obvious when he has his unnamed narrator ask "Was it really beyond human capacity to create a society which didn't ultimately disintegrate through internal strife? Or collapse under the weight of its own laws. Or suffer damaging rivalries with other societies?" There are several other equally heavy-handed observations of this nature.
Meanwhile, the actual characters are never defined or even described except through their (to me, incomprehensible) obsession with old 45 rpm records of mostly obscure popular songs. Don't these people have lives? How old are they? From the book, it seems they could be anywhere from unemployed adolescent high school drop-outs to retirees. None of them seems to have a job, or a family they belong to, or a social life outside the pub where they all gather.
Luckily, a quick read-- finished it in an afternoon.
This is an odd little book. Two friends set up a society at their local pub for "forensic" listening to records. Essentially this means listening only, with no criticisms or comments, rules that are strictly enforced by founder James, sometimes to others' discomfort.
As the little society takes off, suddenly a competitor emerges the Confessional Record Society. The latter seeks to overwhelm the Forensic Records Society with mass appeal, but the forensic men stick to their principles.
This is all a pretty obvious allegory for religion and schisms within churches, including charismatics, low church, etc. Mills also plays around a bit with time, in that Forensic meetings seem to run longer than anyone thought, but I'm not clear what he was trying to do there.
The ending has attracted some adverse comment, and I didn't really like it. I took it to indicate that the narrator had moved beyond his obsession about listening and learned to experience music as a part of life, but I'm not sure that's what was meant.
I'm not sure I can think of another writer quite like Mills -- he writes slim novels about allegorical situations more than characters. He does so in a completely deadpan style that manages to be both funny and sinister. In this book, the titular club is founded two guys who decide that their mutual reverence for listening to 7" vinyl singles may be shared by others.
What follows is a blow by blow account of the club they form in the back of their local pub, and the ebbs and flows of its membership as rival offshoots form and meet on other evenings. As in many of his books, arbitrary rules figure heavily, and the bickering over the best way to sit in a room together and listen to music becomes an allegory for all forms of factionalism -- especially the kinds of extreme religious and political schisms that currently threaten western democracies.
Some readers may find it all a bit obvious, and perhaps it is -- but if you like his distinctive writing style, you'll enjoy this latest example. The writing managers to be soothing, funny, and discomfiting at the same time, and it's hard to explain how he does it. Unfortunately, I didn't find this one to be wrapped up in as tight a bow as others of his, and so it left me a little underwhelmed.
I ran my finger along the book cover several times to make sure there wasn't actually a 45 in there. Finally something different on a jacket; I think two-thirds of all the books I read this year had block lettering over a blurry photo.
The book begins simply, with two friends enjoying a record. One of them mentions that probably nobody else in the world is listening to that record at that time, and the notion prompts them to form the Forensic Records Society Monday nights in the backroom of the pub they frequent. But hell is other people, and the purity of two friends sharing a moment over a record quickly goes by the wayside as the group splinters into various paranoid record-appreciation factions mostly having only slightly-different rules yet meeting on the other days of the week at the same pub, which has the same name as another nearby pub, where, we can only guess, other societies are similarly forming, thriving, withering, and dying.
You can easily see this as being about religion, with the glitziest rival faction that charges for "record confessionals" standing in as organized religion. Or you could, as our narrator outright suggests, see this as a normal breakdown of any society. Or you could just see it as the ebb and flow of a friendship or power structures, or all of the above.
Do I understand the ending? No, I do not. I thought about going online for others' ideas about it, but that seemed iffy, considering James's hard and fast rule against commenting on the records. (Bad enough to write a review of the book, probably. Sorry, James.)
Lots of fun, weird moments. If you like Beckett, you'll be thrilled to have something new. It will become tempting to make a list of all the records and listen to them all in order of their mention. Just don't invite a crowd or someone will surely ruin it for you. Probably with an iPhone.
I enjoyed the music but the characters were not very well defined. Maybe that was the point, making the book point out that the music was shallow, but I doubt that was the point.
exactly what i needed to read to get me out of my reading slump. did not expect to love it but i do. goes to show , you have to read a lot of mediocre books to find the special ones.
Hilarious and sublime.
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