Rathcormick: the Audio Book
Rathcormick
The Audio Book on CD and cassette
Read by Irish actor, Gerry O’Brien
Published in the UK by Soundings and available in an 8-cassette set or on 8 CDs
Here is a review by Sue Arnold from The Guardian, 10 May 2008:
Rathcormick: A Childhood Recalled, by Homan Potterton, read by Gerry O’Brien (9½hrs unabridged, Soundings, £26.99)
And now, as they say, for something completely different. Homan is the youngest of eight children growing up in the 1950s at Rathcormick, a Georgian farmhouse in County Meath that has been inhabited over the last 300 years by 10 generations of Pottertons. It’s the sort of old-fashioned childhood – bicycles, picnics, holidays by the sea, eccentric relatives – that you associate with Enid Blyton, except that there isn’t a single adventure of any kind. Unless you count Mr Potterton, referred to by the family as “Himself”, driving his Ford Prefect at 30 miles an hour in the middle of the road to avoid being hit by stray croquet balls from the gardens he passes. The Pottertons are protestants, but not the snooty Anglo-Irish kind of protestants with titles. Mrs Potterton wins the bottled fruit prize at the local show every year with the same jar of pickled pears, and every December puts the bottle of Sanatogen Tonic Wine her husband has given her for Christmas on the same shelf in the pantry. It’s not exactly life’s rich tapestry, but the author’s dry wit, elegant style and fascination with domestic minutiae somehow keeps you gripped. Sue Arnold
