The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock
By: Jane Riley / Narrated By: Steve West
Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
Bits o’ charm here and there, but Promise soon becomes Predictable
Our main character, our Hero, mortician Oliver Clock had me when he crept into a coffin to make sure he hadn’t gained enough weight to make him, well, too much of a burden for pallbearers when his time comes. Yeh, he’s beein hitting the cheeseboard like crazy, is fond of his foodie delights, but? Can he still FIT?! After all, as he lays there, shoes off lest he muss and dirty the satin, he’s feeling a weeee bit cramped. Aha! Time to go on a diet. After all, the Love of His Life, florist Marie, has just fessed up, in passing, that Oliver’s a good guy, and her husband? Not so much.
I thought this was going to be a quirky Listen, quirky characters with some clever plotting. Maybe I was thinking this would be like a Nick Spalding ANYthing Goes book, but with a tad more heart (Not that Spalding doesn’t deliver heart!). After all, Oliver lives an orderly, if a trifle dissatisfied, life—everything organized and regimented, his job in the funeral parlor biz set in stone, tho’ truly, he woulda liked to go into something else, but Life (And his father’s early death) kinda made the decision for him.
A guy jumping into a coffin; said guy working in a funeral parlor and having to explain THAT to blind dates? Quirky!
Uhm, while there is indeed some charm throughout, mostly this is about Oliver doing and thinking the SAME things, over and over. And over. All in a verrrrry long Not Quite 10-hours. He DOES try to Live after Marie’s death (No spoiler there, it happens early on), opens up to dating, manages an increasingly fraught relationship with a very Relationship NOW and FOREVER young woman, whose biological clock, she reminds Oliver repeatedly, is TICKING! And tho’ Oliver does start taking an interest in the family biz, starts making decisions of his own, starts taking chances and expanding? Dude! there’s a LOT of dithering, and cowering, and MORE dithering (Cowering, I can handle as usually that’s the beginning of the character arc for his growth), which became increasingly tedious.
And then there’s the whooooole bit of Oliver clinging, with a frantic grip, to the journal Marie left behind, of the “relationship” he builds with the journal, complete with candlelit tub baths for reading. Quirky? Nope; just creeeepy… and a tad boring. EsPECially as he clings to the very same journal, expounds on it to long-suffering best friends, over and over. Ho-hum, and can we get on with it? Pleeeeeeze?!
Narrator Steve West, however, does MUCH to infuse Life and Emotion into the struggling Oliver’s thoughts and actions. So absoLUTEly no problem there. His female voices don’t blow, and when there IS a bit of an emotional breakthrough near the end, West manages to make it really quite touching. M’ only complaint? West narrates this sooo slowly, and while it does flow decently, yikes! I ALWAYS neeeed to jack up my Listening speed cuz I’m ornery that way, so man! was I listening at x1.8-x2, or what? Seriously!
Of course, that could possibly indicate that the problem lies SOLEly with meeee rather than with West, -but-
There you are, and what’s a person to do?
No, West does well overall, I just wish he’d been given more creative scenes and interactions to read, more adventures rather than one man coming to terms with only a few issues.
Not the best story in the world; not the worst story in the world.
I’d say Huzzah For Mediocrity, but I put almost 10-hours into this. I don’t regret the Listen, but I DO think, given m’ impression overall of it, that I really shoulda enjoyed the napping I did more. Yep, fell asleep several times and had to backtrack plenty -but-
There you are,
and what’s a person to do?
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