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    The Roundabout Man
    The Roundabout Man
    The Roundabout Man
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Roundabout Man

    Written by Clare Morrall

    Narrated by Gordon Griffin

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    By the Booker-shortlisted author of Astonishing Splashes of Colour; a wittily observed slice of modern life as it plumbs the gulf between nostalgia and reality

    Who is the Roundabout Man? He doesn't look like a tramp, yet he lives on a roundabout in a caravan and survives on the leftovers from a motorway service station. He calls himself Quinn, the name of a boy in a world-famous series of children's books. When Quinn's reclusive existence is invaded, he has to face his past, and the uncomfortable truth of who he really is.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateJun 1, 2012
    ISBN9781471201462
    The Roundabout Man
    Author

    Clare Morrall

    Clare Morrall's first novel, Astonishing Splashes of Colour, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. She is a music teacher with two grown children. She lives in Birmingham, England.

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    Reviews for The Roundabout Man

    4/5

    23 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Quinn has settled into a kind of contentment after living for 5 years in a caravan on a roundabout when his peace is disturbed - shortly after an interview with a journalist, he is attacked and his home is trashed. He finds himself relying on the hospitality of a nearby service station where he has been a regular cafeteria patron.This is the opening for a quirky and moving story about an older man remembering his childhood and coming to a new understanding of it. It is quite slow paced but I liked the writing and the quiet humour. Quinn and his triplet sisters grew up with a mother who was an acclaimed writer of children's books, in which they appeared as characters, but the reality was rather less idyllic than the fiction or than her public persona.One for fans of reflective fiction rather than action packed stories.Reviewed March 2012. I received a copy for review through the Amazon Vine programme.
    • 4/5
      'The Triplets and Quinn'.I enjoyed the audio version of this book, excellently read by Gordon Griffin. It was light enough to entertain me whilst driving, while having some deeper messages to make it worthwhile.The Roundabout Man of the title, is none other than Quinn Smith, depicted in his mother's popular series of childrens' books, as a scruffy-haired little boy with falling-down socks. When we meet him he is nearing 60 and desperate to separate himself from this huge persona.He now lives where no-one will ever look for him - in a caravan, in the centre of a roundabout.Unfortunately one person does track him down, a nosey young magazine reporter, whose article sends his life spiralling in totally unforeseen directions.The motorway service station, just off the roundabout, is his source of food, warmth and contact with people. But what starts out as an impersonal, transitory, brick building, turns out to house an interesting secondary family.'The Triplets and Quinn' series also features Quinn's triplet sisters, who appeared to be close as children but seem to have fractured apart as adults.Larissa Smith, their mother and the author of the famous series, writes knowledgeably about childhood adventures, yet seems totally unable to care for and love her own children.Clare Morrall writes beautifully about isolation and the longing for a mother, but the reason given for why Larissa was so distant was the weak link for me. Otherwise, this was an excellent read from an interesting author.Also read by Clare Morrall:The Language of Others (5 stars)
    • 4/5
      As usual, Clare Morrall features a socially isolated person as the main character who is at the borderline of 'normality'. Of course, I read and enjoy her books because I identify with such people, but I reckon there are a lot others who find a similar connection, at least in some aspects. For example, many people probably feel estranged from their siblings or their parents and find themselves a little confused by that feeling of estrangement. I reckon Morrall excels in the way she narrates the one-to-one interactions between individuals. There's not just dialog, but also what is going on in one person's head - and what they think is going on in the other person's head. I suppose the weaknesses of her work are the unlikely twists and turns in the plot, and the unreality of the basic story (and maybe the predictability of the story....but life is predictable, isn't it?), but for me that doesn't get in the way too much. There's plenty of reality there to keep me satisfied.Keep going Clare! Don't let that lymphoma get the better of you.
    • 5/5
      Another great novel from Clare Morrall who is fast becoming one of my favourite writers. In this one we meet Quinn, aged 60 and living in a caravan concealed on a traffic island. He survives by foraging for food in the bins at a nearby motorway service station and doesn’t consider himself a tramp.It isn’t really a story about rough living, more about the past that Quinn is seeking to escape from. It turns out that his mother was a very successful children’s novelist who fictionalised the lives of her four children, which made them rich but had detrimental effects on their lives in other ways. A bit like the real Christopher Robin I suppose – I read somewhere that he was less than impressed with the way his childhood had become public property – so I guess the author is on firm ground here.The way the phenomenon of the fictional books is delivered is particularly impressive – the reader gets a real sense of them, with their irresistible mix of whimsy and adventure set within the bubble of an idyllic 1950s childhood. I thought initially they were supposed to be a thinly veiled “Famous Five” series – the characters even consume “lashings of ginger beer”, but towards the end Enid Blyton herself is referenced, as though to make it clear that they are not. With film adaptations and computer games and obsessive fans across the world, it is clear to the reader what a massive burden Quinn and his sisters have had to bear.Whilst a thoroughly engaging read, I found some apects of the novel disappointing. The action, with one or two exceptions, is very low key and it doesn’t really build to any kind of crescendo. The explanation offered for Quinn’s mother’s indifference towards him, and boys in particular, felt weak. And some of the goings-on at the service station, whilst interesting in a way (I haven’t read many books centred around service stations and the attempt to give this one a personality and a heart was admirable) weren’t always believable. Would the assistant really have left her two kids in the care of a homeless guy all day?Looking back, what I liked most about this novel was the thing I have liked about all her others – the way she zeroes in on people in society who are different in some way, and examines the challenges they face in a compelling and readable way.
    • 4/5
      Clare Morrall has not let me down yet. I've read four of her five published books (so far) and they've all been excellent reads. Quinn Smith is the character in a series of books from the 1950s, along with his triplet sisters. But Quinn Smith is also a real person, on whom the character was based. And after years of having to live up to people's expectations of what he should be like he rebels and goes to live on a roundabout in a caravan.When he's attacked and his caravan is vandalised he finds himself back in society and having to learn to deal with people and his issues again.This is a lovely read. It flits around a lot between the distant past, the more recent past and the present, but it's quite easy to follow and I was never confused as to which time I was reading about. I also found the whole family dynamic in the book really interesting. I would guess that Quinn's mother is based on one or two well-known children's writers from the era, writers who dazzled and enchanted children with their stories but couldn't quite deal with their own children and give them a happy childhood.Really enjoyed this one and look forward to more from this author.
    • 5/5
      Family are not always all you want them to be. Quinn Smith grows up with the same name as a character in his mother’s books, a funny little boy with a perfect life, an inspiration to thousands. But Quinn’s reality is far from the happy family life portrayed in the stories. His mother is a cold, remote, dislikeable woman who never wanted the child she writes of so lovingly in her stories. His sisters, the precociously capable triplets of the books, are, in reality, unhappy, self-obsessed bullies. Then there are the succession of foster children, who are never considered good enough to be integrated into the 'perfect' Smith family. The reality of the idealised, media-darling, happy-family tales of 'The Triplets and Quinn' is that of a dysfunctional, neglected, love-starved family with bonds so fragile that they simply disintegrate as the children grow old enough to rebel and the family falls apart.Now in his fifties, Quinn has finally found the courage to make his escape, living in a caravan on a roundabout beside a motorway service station. It’s a world away from the privileged cold comfort of The Cedars, the family home immortalised by his writer-mother, but Quinn loves his lonely life, believing he's hidden far enough away to have escaped his family forever. Then a terrible, chance event throws him on the mercy of strangers, and he is forced into the realisation that families don’t have to be linked by blood.Clearly inspired by the memories of Enid Blyton’s unhappy children, The Roundabout Man is a warm, delightful and very enjoyable read - and one that makes you think. Quinn is such an engaging character, his worlds – the current reality of his caravan life, the past life as the immortalised child of a famous writer, and the imaginary world of his mother’s books, where everyone is happy, the sun always shines, where there’s always another adventure to be had with a slap-up picnic at the end – are all beautifully evocative and detailed.There were very few things that didn’t work for me, but one was the mysterious benefactor. So much was made of the unexpected gifts, I was expecting something more than we finally got - not a major shock-horror-I-wasn’t-expecting-THAT! Revelation, that would have been wrong, but I would have liked something a little more interesting, more satisfying, than the afterthought we got.Then there was the ending. On first reading, the ending was unexpectedly melancholy and downbeat. I was a little upset. I wanted… something else, I’m not sure what, exactly, just something. But then I thought about it, couldn’t stop thinking about it - this book will take a while to leave my thoughts - and realised it was the only possible ending. Quinn had to leave the fantasy of his happy home and perfect childhood behind so he could finally move on. He has a new family now, the friends who were there for him when his blood-relations were not. He has a new life, a home he loves, finally, he’s free.A beautiful, thoughtful, and very readable book; highly recommended to anyone who enjoys gentle pathos touched with kindness and humanity.