Bluebeard: The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
By: Kurt Vonnegut / Narrated By: Mark Bramhall
Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
Not the best Vonnegut, but oh! the ending! Wow…!
Must I admit it? I must: I, quite sheepishly, confess to coming late to the Kurt Vonnegut party. I’ve listened to only three others of his works, and for Slaughterhouse Five I dinged the beJESus outta the narrator for his exceedingly bored tones.
-BUT- October is the birthday month of my dearest Doulos friend, and good cow! is Vonnegut a fave of his, or what?! And so I scrolled like crazy the Audible website for the highest rated Vonnegut offering. ‘Twas Bluebeard. So when I say this isn’t his best, please do not, for even an instant, discard this as a Listening Possibility. Cuz, friend, Mark Bramhall is narrating this, and that man can do no wrong, really he can’t. My only miiiiiinor ding is that he sounds a trifle more youthful than our hero, Rabo Karabekian who happens to be in his 70s. Bramhall, while perfectly capturing each character’s voice, while perfectly relaying each situation Rabo happens to find himself in, sounds just a weeeee bit younger than a man sewing things up for a soon-to-come end of life. He has a secret he’s been carrying, and Bramhall does Rabo’s fraught expression of that wicked man, “Bluebeard”’s choices quite well.
A new bride is told she can do anything -EXCEPT- look in a certain room. She does, and she seals her fate. Likewise, Rabo has a barn, a place for potatoes, but it’s for his art. You can do anything for Rabo, do anything with Rabo. Just ooooone thing: Do NOT open the barn door. His art, that he’s been working on for aaaages, is not for the masses. Question him at your own peril; be prepared to be dissed.
This was all well and good, but Bluebeard lacks the truly wry and twisted wit that I’d heard and absorbed in his other novels…. yeh yeh yeh… just three of ‘em, but! In its place is some character development, and a whole lotta writing characters with major flaws. Thus far, I’m used to characters that skim the surface in quirky and twisted ways. Here, things unfold with a bit more care and grace. By the time one comes to the end, one is full-well aware of strengths, flaws, foibles. So when that laaaaast exchange of the book rolls around?
It’s a gut-crusher that kinda sorta brought me to my knees, even as I felt my heart soaring. Nope, no Spoilers here. Most Vonnegut fans will immediately comprehend what I’m getting at, or they’ll know it by heart already. But for those of us who’ve shimmied through Life without a Vonnegut book to peruse and absorb? Why, get ready for, well, a few tears of the Happy type, when the secret of the Potato Barn is revealed, in heart-hammering prose, in questions of morality dabbed onto a monstrously huge canvas. Where an entire lifetime’s worth of regret, horror, and some shame bloom into visible light. The last line? It acknowledges the horror, but it elevates as all things are tied up and brought to the uplifting conclusion.
So what are you waiting for? Scurry on to give this Vonnegut a try. I did dearly like it, but with Bramhall delivering the last, the final, exchange?
Oh my: Tissue please, and loved it loved it loved it.
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