The celebrity audiobook is a hot property: Colin Firth, Claire Danes, Alan Cumming and Meryl Streep have all produced inspired performances. Now Tom "Loki" Hiddleston gets in on the act. Anyone who has seen him perform Shakespeare or heard him recite poetry knows he has the form.
The celebrity audiobook is a hot property: Colin Firth, Claire Danes, Alan Cumming and Meryl Streep have all produced inspired performances. Now Tom "Loki" Hiddleston gets in on the act. Anyone who has seen him perform Shakespeare or heard him recite poetry knows he has the form. His debut, J.G. Ballard's classic tale of dystopian communal living, High-Rise, is a smart piece of cross-promotion: Hiddleston will star as Robert Laing in a long-awaited movie of the book later this year. The action takes place in a seemingly idyllic social experiment: a block of flats that mixes comfort, safety and convenience from a vaguely threatening outside world. We soon realise the floors conform to a very English class structure, with the uppers on high and the workers down below. Rather icy tensions soon boil over into strife as all hell breaks loose. Hiddleston's intelligent, cultured tones are perfect for Ballard's exacting prose, which offers crystal-clear images and descriptions worthy of a draughtsman.