THE TOY CAR: A SHORT STORY (kindle) by Rose Tremain

Published in 2025 by Amazon Original Stories.

The Toy Car is a coming-of-age story of Petros, an attractive 17 year old boy who lives on a sunny Greek tourist island. His life is mapped out for him - his father owns a popular taxi service and eventually he will inherit the business. 

It's a good life by most standards. 

But, his English mother is worried that Petros hasn't seen enough of the world so she convinces his father to send him off to live with her sister and her husband in London for a year abroad.

Petros brings along a toy version of his father's taxi, which is where we get the name of the story.

Up to this point, the story is pretty good.

When Petros arrives in London, his aunt and uncle seem very surprised about everything about him. They have not prepared for his arrival. Everything about the very existence of Petros confounds them.

I have no idea why they are acting this way, but it makes for a very poor experience for Petros. He spirals out of control with homesickness and bad experiences with girls and, eventually, he runs home.

What are the lessons learned in this coming-of-age story? 

Don't try new things?

London's weather is bad compared to the weather of a Greek island?

Better to be a taxi driver than to meet a girl in England?

Who knows what the point was supposed to be - all I know is that this book failed to deliver one except for the four I mentioned above.

I rate this story 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Toy Car: A Short Story by Rose Tremain.

Lord of the Dead: The Secret History of Byron (abridged audiobook) by Tom Holland

Lord Byron as a vampire

Originally published in 1996 by Simon and Schuster.
Performed by Richard E. Grant
Duration: 3 hours, 3 minutes.

Abridged.

I picked up this audiobook version of Lord of the Dead: The Secret History of Byron because I very much enjoyed Holland's non-fiction book about the end of the Roman Republic, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic. I am not particularly a fan of vampire books nor of Lord Byron (who I can believe was a vampire, considering the level of his debauchery and self-absorption) but I decided to give Tom Holland another try and trust that he would make it interesting.

Lord Byron (1788-1824)

The abridgment of the book contributed to my enjoyment, I am sure. There were many long stretches that were so bloated by flowery speeches, especially in the first hour or so of the audiobook, that I probably would have bailed on an unabridged version of the book. However, the last two hours were so interesting and so well-performed by Richard E. Grant that I had to bump the score up to 4 stars.

The running time of the abridged audiobook is about 3 hours and it can be found on Amazon.com here: Lord of the Dead: The Secret History of Byron.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on May 9, 2008.