Past Imperfect - Julian Fellowes Audiobook

Written by Julian Fellowes
Read by Richard Morant
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Release date: September 10, 2009
Duration: 16:47:11

Damian Baxter is hugely wealthy and dying. He lives alone in a big house in Surrey, England, looked after by a chauffeur, butler, cook and housemaid. He has but one concern—his fortune in excess of 500 million and who should inherit it on his death. Past Imperfect is the story of a quest. Damian Baxter wishes to know if he has a living heir. By the time he married in his late thirties he was sterile (the result of adult mumps), but what about before that unfortunate illness? Had he sired a child? He sets himself (and others) to the task of finding his heir.

Julian Fellowes recreates the posh world of 1960s London, in which the upper classes cling to their titles while attempting to stave off the social changes taking place all around them. This is a novel of two worlds: one of debutante balls, the other of “hash” brownies. The unnamed chronicler, voiced by Richard Morant with an appropriate upper-crust tone, must revisit his youth when a former friend contacts him seeking assistance to find his illegitimate child. The man is terminally ill and wants an heir. Morant creates multiple believable female characters, including a drunk and avaricious American and a soft-spoken Moravian princess, but his finest portrayal is that of the desperately sick and regretful Damian. Morant makes the most of the abundant humor but can only do his best with the stilted dialogue, which contains too much story explication. A.B. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine