The Watchmen and V for Vendetta creator Alan Moore’s first collection of short stories spans 40 years of work and veers from playfully mind-bending to downright disturbing. The multicast narration is effective in a work that can sometimes feel overwritten on the page but, with its madcap set pieces and oddball characters, comes into its own when read aloud.
The White Lines actor Laura Haddock narrates the opening story, Hypothetical Lizard, a chilling tale of revenge set in a brothel that is frequented by sorcerers, while Location, Location, Location, read by W1A’s Nina Sosanya, sees the Second Coming unfolding in the streets of Bedford, where an estate agent shows the vape-loving Messiah an end-of-terrace house handily situated on the site of the Garden of Eden. Rory Kinnear and Emilia Fox gamely narrate Not Even Legend, where the twin narratives see time moving in opposite directions, and where a group of blundering, self-satisfied paranormal enthusiasts are infiltrated by one of the otherworldly entities with which they are so obsessed.
The book’s centrepiece is What We Can Know About Thunderman, a vituperative faux history of the comics industry that is longer than the other stories combined and which is read with spleen-venting relish by Matt Reeves. The story spans 75 years and, along with the superhero of the title, features a gaggle of nerdy comic creators (those au fait with the genre will recognise the similarities to actual industry figures) operating in an out-of-touch business that is “sitting in a mess of its prolapsed intestines”.
• Illuminations is available from Bloomsbury, 17hr 23min
Further listening
Don’t Laugh, It’ll Only Encourage Her
Daisy May Cooper, Penguin Audio, 7hr 9 min
The star and co-creator of This Country reads her poignant and funny memoir documenting her childhood on the breadline in Gloucestershire and her rise to fame as a writer and actor.
Daisy Jones & the Six
Taylor Jenkins Reid, Random House Audiobooks, 9hr 3min
An ensemble cast, including Jennifer Beals, Judy Greer and Benjamin Bratt, narrate this heady tale about the rise and fall of a 70s rock band, loosely based on Fleetwood Mac.
