Insignificance

Written by James Clammer

Narrated by Lee Ross

Length

4h 52m

"On a hot summer’s day, Joseph Forbes has returned to work as a plumber after an illness. He is worried about the job, he is worried about the jet stream, he is worried about his wife, he is worried about his son. As we accompany Joseph through his day – as he drains pipes, makes tea and puts plasters on his fingers – the devastating events of the past seven years are revealed to us. Joseph’s life – ordinary, banal, insignificant – comes to show us what is really most significant for us all. Drawing on the innovations of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and turning them into 21st century alchemy, James Clammer’s utterly engrossing, beautiful, funny, poignant novel transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, the comic into the tragic, the insignificant into the significant. Lee Ross’s reading adds alchemy to alchemy, drawing out the humour and humanity, conjuring characters and worlds."