Lingua Franca

By: William Thacker

Narrated by: Angus Freathy

Long-listed for The Guardian's Not the Booker prize 2016.

There's a problem with Barrow, but it can be fixed. You just need to change the name to Birdseye. Birdseye-in-Furness....

Miles Platting is pulled from the ruins of a shipwreck into a world in which no one will speak to him.

The founder of Lingua Franca - a naming-rights agency committed to renaming every UK town after a corporate sponsor - Miles recounts the story of his quest for linguistic supremacy to anyone who'll listen. Confined to his hospital bed in a deathly quiet ward, Miles seeks to find his colleagues and reunite with his true love.

But in doing so, Miles must confront his deepest held convictions and consider, what's in a name? in a world where the spoken word has been replaced with silence.

©2016 Legend Press Ltd (P)2018 Legend Press Ltd

Critic reviews

"William Thacker is a name you will hear a lot more often." (Matt Haig, author)

"Remarkable." (Caroline Smailes, author)

"This is bloody brilliant." (Heydon Prowse, writer of the Bafta-winning The Revolution Will Be Televised)

A hidden gem

Lingua Franca, written by William Thacker, took me a little by surprise. The blurb made the book sound interesting enough to give it a go, but I had no idea just how much I'd end up enjoying it. Quite a lot, as it happens! It's short, just shy of six hours, but there's a lot of story to draw you in. Told from the perspective of the main character, Miles Platting, we get a first-hand account of what led him to be in the silent hospital he found himself in.

Miles is the poster boy of capitalism, taken to the extreme. A founder of the wildly successful Lingua Franca, a company that came up with the idea of changing town names by getting them corporate sponsorships. The old, run-down town of Barrow-in-Furness is about to become Birdseye-in-Furness, and most of the locals are none to happy about that.

The main character gets good emotional growth as he transcribes the events leading to the natural disaster that left him buried under rubble with only a slug to talk to. Infuriating at times because the silence of everyone is overwhelming. A few clues are dropped along the way, which helped get the picture of what was happening straight in my head.

Narration by Angus Freathy was great. Excellent pacing and variation among characters. No production issues stood out, so overall a great reading and well produced.

I jumped onto Amazon to see what others had thought of this book and found it has seemingly gone unappreciated. It's only garnered a handful of reviews, which is a shame. This was thought-provoking, funny, and a rather original tale to boot. Give this hidden gem a crack.

I was given this audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review. I have not let this gift affect nor influence my opinions of this audiobook and have left an honest review.

very good

Loved it !! this story. the narrator is so fantastic it's like your really there!! good overall