I tried so, so hard to like this. It's Stephen Fry, for heavens' sake! With counterfactual history! But I just... can't. It's meandering, slow, and by the time I got to the instigating event, I was so far from invested that the fact you basically have to start all over again was just too much.

Both Stephen Fry and Richard E Grant are fantastic narrators, and if I didn't have a million podcasts to listen to I would gladly use this to soothe me to sleep of an evening. Both of their voices are ones that you don't just listen to - it feels like your body absorbs them into you. But, while Richard E Grant has a harsh enough tone to successfully portray his chapters, Stephen's voice is just... all wrong. Hearing that voice playing a 24 year old just feels odd. And while I acknowledge that the book was written in 1996 and vernacular has changed since then, again hearing that voice talk about being 'cool', 'hip', 'funky' etc. is really off-putting. 

Likewise, you can tell it's written by Stephen Fry. The prose is marvelously verbose, but there are so many tangents that the narrative goes off on that it was very hard to remain focused. Likewise, at least at the outset, there's no clear rhyme or reason for the time jump chapters, which just adds to the confusion. Sadly, I agree with the professor on this one!!!

I may try eyeball reading this one day. I can see why other people would like it and certainly it contains Fry's usual combination of wit, charm, intelligence and eye-rolling at the stupidity of aspects of modern life, but this version, on this day... it's just not for me.