Bill Nighy narrates Martin Amis's Booker-nominated satirical novel Yellow Dog, and he has a ball voicing the author's larger-than-life protagonists. The audiobook, released by Vintage Digital and running 11hr 54min, brings to life a cast that includes a writer attacked for naming an old gangster associate, a bored king, and a tabloid reporter.
A trio of comic narratives
In the 2003 novel, Xan Meo is set upon by two men in a pub who cosh him over the head: “Like the statue of a fallen tyrant, he crashed sideways into the damp paving, and lay still.” Meo is a writer and actor whose late father was a dangerous gangster; the attack is in revenge for Meo naming an old associate of his father in print. Meo survives, though the injury leaves him with an altered personality. Where he was previously a conscientious husband and father, now he is a chip off the old block.
While Meo languishes in hospital, King Henry IX – who is struggling to conceal his boredom with the job – is informed that images of his 15-year-old daughter in the bath are in circulation. And Clint Smoker, star reporter and gossip peddler at the tabloid newspaper the Morning Lark, gets an unexpected tipoff.
Nighy's engaging performance
Yellow Dog explores the baser instincts of men through a trio of interconnected comic narratives. It is one of several Amis titles being released on audio this year; others include Money, London Fields, Night Train and The Rachel Papers.
Along with Meo, Smoker and King Henry, a suitably eccentric supporting cast includes Russia, Xan's long-suffering wife; gruff bodyguard Mal Bale; pornography tycoon Cora Susan; and mercurial football striker and tabloid darling Ainsley Car. Though some of these characters veer into caricature on the page, Nighy succeeds not only in making them believable but great fun to be around.
