Jubilee

By: Shelley Harris

Narrated by: Sartaj Garewal

It's 1977, the day of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, when a photographer captures a moment forever: a festive street party with bunting and Union Jacks fluttering in the breeze and, right in the centre of the frame, a small Asian boy staring intensely at the camera. The photo becomes infamous when it is adopted as a symbol of everything that is great and good about Britain, but what is the real story behind it? Relationships between the neighbours on Cherry Gardens are far from easy, and minor frictions threaten to erupt as the street party begins...

Fast forward to the present and that boy, Satish, is now a successful paediatric heart surgeon, saving lives and families every single day. But he's living with a secret - he's addicted to controlled prescription drugs. A message about a proposed reunion of the children in the photograph throws his life into turmoil as he thinks back to Jubilee Day, and the events that changed his life for ever.

Read by Sartaj Garewal

(p) 2012 Orion Publishing Group©2011 Shelley Harris

Confusing repetitiveness

What did you like best about Jubilee? What did you like least?

The story line is not bad, but it is let down by a number of issues, both related to the story and the performance.

What was most disappointing about Shelley Harris???s story?

The most irritating aspect of the story is the repetition of certain events, despite it being presented from the perspective of different characters. The worst of these is the kiss between Mandy and Shafeez. The thing is that the different characters bring at most two different perspectives. In addition that the jumps in time are not indicated with sufficient clarity. One often wonders whether what is happening is in the present or the past. Narratives also often become unclear as one looses track of who is saying what, not assisted by a performance that does not distinguish the different characters.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Mr Garewal reads the text well enough. However, the different characters are not sufficiently distinguished and everybody sounds the same. I also found the random if brief silences throughout the reading to detract from this audiobook.

Could you see Jubilee being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

No.