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Pincher Martin

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Pincher Martin

By: William Golding
Narrated by: Julian Sands
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About this listen

Experience a shipwrecked sailor's psychic disintegration into 'a naked madman on a rock' by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, introduced by Marlon James.

An hour on this rock is a lifetime.

Christopher Martin, the sole survivor of a torpedoed destroyer, is stranded upon a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Pitted against him are the sea, the sun, the brutal cold, and the aching terror of his isolation. To drink there is a pool of rainwater; to eat, seaweed and anemones, preyed upon by feathered reptiles. As he descends into the abyss of his consciousness, weathering lightning strikes of memory, Martin must try to assemble the truth of his fate - piece by terrible piece.

'A work of genius.' Philippa Gregory

'The utmost inventiveness ... No reader will forget the world it reveals.' Kingsley Amis

'Wizardry of the first order.' Observer

©2021 William Golding (P)2021 Faber & Faber Classics Genre Fiction Metaphysical & Visionary Psychological Fiction
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Golding is superb. A comprehensive picture of a man whose mind and physicality cannot overcome the limitations of the island he is on. Graphic. Excruciating in parts.

Vivid spiritual and physical unfolding

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I’ve loved this novel for fifty years and finally tried the audiobook, but the narration just doesn’t suit the story. The book is cold, stripped back, and brutally simple. The narrator turns it into a breathless stage performance, adding emotion and drama in places the author never intended.

Instead of letting the isolation and silence speak for themselves, he projects feeling onto every line. It ends up sounding like a theatrical monologue instead of a man fighting for survival on a bare rock.

The story is still powerful, but the performance smothers it. I’ll be returning this and looking for a more straightforward, understated narrator who lets Golding’s writing stand on its own.

A Powerful Book Undone by an Overacted Narration

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