Silver: Return to Treasure Island
by Andrew Motion (read by David Tennant)
Whole Story Audiobooks (audiobook)
You can always tell a big novel when a big name is hired to narrate the audiobook. Andrew Motion's sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island must be quite something if former Dr Who David Tennant was lured into a recording studio. Choosing to update a classic has its pros and cons: on the downside are high expectations; on the up, a ready-made setting and characters. Motion both continues the original and bucks its trend. Our hero is not Jim 'Lad' Hawkins, but his son, Jim Jnr. Long John Silver is joined by a daughter, Natty. There is something of Bilbo Baggins in Jim Jnr: he may have been raised on tales of derring-do, but he loves his peaceful life on the River Thames. But when he meets Silver - and Natty - and is cajoled into stealing his father's treasure map, he swaps domestic bliss for adventure. After a turbulent voyage (mutiny, suicide, hardships), they reach an island paradise that reminds us of Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World. Tennant savours the atmospheric, rather stately prose. The pulse quickens when he roars into Silver, and the story heads seaward. But whether we need this sequel is up for debate.