Spring Flowers, Spring Frost: A Novel
By: Ismail Kadare / Narrated by: Gregory Abbey
Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins
An ATROCITY on sooooo many levels…!!!
Here’s what I was up to several weeks ago:
I started Operation Paperclip cuz I'd been listening to, like, a gazillion (And SIX!) fiction audiobooks, and I had a hankering for a nonfiction History. So, I started it… and…
OH MY GOOD GOLLY GOSH!!!
I thought I knew about the whole Nazi importation biz, but oh how wrong I was. It was soooo sobering, so graphic of its depiction of man’s inhumanity to man, that I found m’self dejected AS HELL!
So here’s where Spring Flowers, Spring Frost by In Love With Himself author Ismail Kadare comes in. From the get-go? So very horrifically atrocious that I was freaking Looking FORWARD to getting back to Operation Paperclip because at least THOSE horrors were upfront and not gussied up with “Poetic” words and stunningly lacking imagery.
Speaking of the words, the oh-please and gag me poetry, this is a really ridiculous translation. Every time Kadare referred to a woman’s genitalia, more on that in a weeee bit, the phrases chosen would’ve been hiLARious had not I felt so, like, WHATTHEHELL?!?-ish. Further, all of the imagery comes off as hackneyed and eyeroll-inducing. Booooo!
Onto the narration which starts the whole shebang off with a resounding Noooooo!!! Gregory Abbey comes off hammering us over the head with BBC Broadcaster tones. And a BBC Broadcaster who is overenthusiastic at that. Granted, Abbey has sooooo little to work with, but Kadare makes a few feeble, oh so feeble, attempts to add political strife to the text, and Abbey just cheerily guffaws it straight on through. Big Sis even thought this was a Western whenst she started listening to it herself. Never a good thing. EsPECially since this touts itself as being an Important Work O’ Art. Piece O’ … actually.
Plot/Story to apprise you of, to summarize so you know what you’re getting into?
There is none. This dude, Mark, fancies himself an artist, but basically he’s OBSESSED with women’s nether regions and with incest. He can’t look at his erstwhile girlfriend without pondering how she MUST be sleeping with her brother cuz isn’t that what ALL women do, like, ALL the time?!? Or cousins. But he prefers pondering brothers. Welllllll, then Kadare throws in Oedipus, so he can ponder sleeping with one’s mother. There’s the aforementioned politics and paranoia, mentions of Tantalus, a leeeeengthy contemplation of the Iceberg Who Sank The Titanic. And when all was said and FINALLY DONE? I was wondering whatthehell The Kitchen Sink was doing out there cuz he throws that in with EVERYTHING ELSE as well…
And dude! the CONSTANT babbling about women and their genitalia!!! It really can be the latest drinking game, just slug one back when Kadare Goes There. You’d be drunk, like, posthaste!
Which is probably the only way to get through the LONGEST less than 5-hours this is.
Started off with a bit of an interesting tale of a young girl marrying a snake as a Blood Debt and winding up blissfully happy. But that ends with her doing the unforgivable which was just plain exasperating. Especially considering what sort of bastardized BS the rest of it turned out to be.
This. Was. Free with Audible’s Plus program. So no lost dollars.
But NOTHING can gimme back those hours.
And my poor brain! What do I do with all these new neural pathways that were blazed?!?
I Want My Un-Molested Brain Back!!!
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