When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East

When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East: A Novel

By: Quan Barry / Narrated By: David Lee Huynh

Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins

Reading pals LOVED it; those who Listened to it? >A MIGHTY MEH<

And actually? MEH is an awfully kind and generous way of summing up my feelings towards this, When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East.

During a discussion by we four Lovely Literary Ladies, it was immediately apparent that I was on m’ own when it came to bashing this. M’ friends, extremely intelligent women, with keen insights, sensitive natures, and ways with words, loved the flow of this, loved the writing. They felt like they were on a journey. One they loved and were sorry ended.

One friend had underlined various passages, and when she read them out, I had to agree that they were extraordinarily well-crafted, lovely bits of prose. And when the trio discussed what they loved about it, they were enraptured, feeling that not only was reading this time well-spent, but that they had been changed by its beauty.

So I shut the heck up and tried not to be a raging and raving downer. Nobody likes someone spewing bile all over what they love.

And when I said the narration was atrocious, they posited that the narrator could indeed make or break an experience.

So I shall start with the dismal narration, shall I? New-to-me narrator, David Lee Huynh, can neither keep his characters straight, nor can he convey a woman with any great skill. The breathy completely stupid voices he uses for the women in this was galling. And considering author Quan Barry writes them to be simpering waaaay-to-the-side vessels of convenience? Well, I s’pose Huynh conveyed what was written. If you want to hear about women being given like gifts, or to be used by erstwhile monks, or to be the objects of a lackey’s forbidden lusts?

Then, you! friend, are in luck. Give this a go.

Further, there’s a decided quandary for the listener as we find our young protagonist’s dilemmas with everything having an Out Clause. Monks not eating the flesh of the once living? But of course not… until they do. Monks with cell phones… getting a strong signal in the dessert plains. But of course. Monks being celibate? Well, let’s have our protagonist be lusty, with it if not constantly on the mind… certainly on it, like, for a LOT of this barely 8 1/2 hour Listen.

And then Barry enlightens us even more with sects that wave phalluses around, like, CONSTANTLY. Slightly egregious and disturbing.

Yeh Yeh Yeh, lovely language, but dude! she comPLETEly lost me with women being graced when a penis touches them. I did NOT appreciate the way women were portrayed, and I DEFinitely did NOT appreciate the way Huynh delivered them as they wandered through this story.

To top things all off, the narration, fraught in places, dull in others, plodded to the extent that m’ usual x1.2 Listening Speed had to be jacked up to x2. Partially cuz it was a slow ooze, partially cuz I wanted it over and done with.

Who will adore this? Anyone who loved The Alchemist, and that’s saying A LOT, a vaaaast amount of people will love this. I note, that THAT book/audiobook bored me to tears,

…so there’s that… it could just be meeeeee…!

Give it a try if your looking for something spiritual and edifying. But do READ it.

It was touch and go plenty for me, but the narration?

Boooooo!!!

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