The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea

Mark Haddon followed up his novel THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME with this collection of poems. The subjects are eclectic, and there are some especially clever gems, such as "This Poem is Certificate 18," which pokes fun at our age of rating systems and parental warnings. They're all read beautifully by 11 British narrators, including Jo Wyatt, Steven Crossley, and Maggie Mash. The actors are named at the beginning of the recording, but it's frustrating that there's no designation of who's reading which poem. Also, having so many different voices reading the poems, no matter how skillfully, makes them feel disjointed and distances the listener. A more intimate audio experience might have been achieved by a single narrator, or by the poet himself. J.M.D. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

April 3, 2006
Despite the Curious Incident
–like title, fans of Haddon's novel will find this collection's pleasures less immediate, but that doesn't mean they aren't here. Forlorn yet resolved in the face of an abrupt change of station, Haddon's speaker makes his way through a Britain that seems composed largely of hotels and rich people, as strange to him as the world was to his earlier protagonist: "above the confusion of forks// you will realize that is/ where your journey starts." Other poems rewrite horatian odes, imagine "Christmas Night 1930" and effect a "decimation" of John Buchan's novel The House of Four Winds
. Technically accomplished and spikily humorous ("You did the Hippy-Hippy Shake/ I messed with Mr. In-Between"), the poems are marbled with scenes of same-sex love and desire, and ruminations on writing, fame and death. They will whet appetites for Haddon's fiction follow-up.