THE TIN DRUM

Comic horror of the highest order, Nobelist Grass’s first novel and first masterpiece was made into an Oscar-winning film and now appears as an equally meritorious audiobook. It is the sardonic reminiscence of Oskar, an institutionalized midget whose tin drum and piercing scream of protest can shake mountains. Narrator Guidall has outdone himself with this title. It isn’t that he has obviously studied the book thoroughly before entering the studio--he always does his homework--nor that he has hit the right tone and has cleverly made his voice sound small--nor even that he gets all the sly, obscure (for Americans) social and political jokes about Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. It’s all those things--plus he has astutely picked up the thematic threads and images and manifested them without clubbing the listener over the head with them. The palpable richness of Guidall’s delivery is immensely entertaining. Y.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 01]