Tommy's Tale

Tommy is quite the naughty lad. Without shame he tells the listener all about his late-twenty-something life of outlandish, sexually explicit debauchery. He wants to grow up and have a family, but he can't seem to stop abusing drugs--or stay out of bars, nightclubs, and various bedrooms. Narrator Alan Cumming tells this tale with laughter, cries, moans, roars, and a rush of words and feelings. The Scots narrator gives Tommy an English accent--when he's not putting on an Irish lilt as Tommy tells a fairy tale. This audiobook is raw and lewd, but if you imagine Tommy pouring his heart out on a barstool next to you, its immediacy and intimacy prove touching. G.D. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

July 1, 2002

A young British pansexual with a penchant for chemical and physical excess stars in award-winning actor Cumming's (Cabaret, Eyes Wide Shut) zany debut. As his 30th birthday looms, Tommy grapples with both his desire to have a child and his fear of settling down. He also embarks on numerous benders ("I have coke spilling out of my left nostril, a ten-pound note jammed up my right"), while roommates Bobby, a gay lamp-shade designer, and Sadie, a mother-figure of sorts, plus lover Charlie and Charlie's eight-year-old son, try to help Tommy grow up. Cumming infuses the narrative with obscenities, puns, pop culture references and fairy tales, the latter appearing at crucial points in the plot as thinly veiled stories about Tommy himself. Cumming also gleefully overemploys the literary gimmick: there are lists of advice on anything from drinking to depression, flashbacks, jump cuts ("we're doing one of those time-jump things," Tommy notes), subtitles, interviews and direct appeals to the reader. Though at times insightful and clever ("Charlie belonged to that lucky, lucky group of normal people who are not waiting for their lives to start," Tommy says of his lover), the book often feels as hysterical and muddled as its narrator does. While Cumming explores plenty of graphic sexual escapades, bigger matters—such as Tommy's transformation from boy to man at the book's end—are left unexamined. At the core of this book is a charming personality—intelligent, frolicking, sensitive and sexual—but only rarely does it emerge from amid the extremes of story and style. (Sept.)FYI:Those who liked Cumming's character in the movie
The Anniversary Party will find Tommy appealingly familiar, and for fans of
Sex and the City, here's the novel version—albeit a bit racier and with a predominantly gay cast.