I won't lie to you. I originally put Portobello by Ruth Rendell on my Audible wishlist because I saw that Time Curry was the narrator. I genuinely believe that you can tell a lot about a person by the Tim Curry movie they think of first. Rocky Horror Picture Show? Clue? Fern Gully? The Wild Thornberrys? The Three Musketeers? Pretty much any animated duck cartoon from the 1990s?
... For me? Muppet Treasure Island. Seriously.
So imagine my disappointment when Tim Curry turned out to be the best thing about Portobello. To be fair, it was definitely a departure from my normal science fiction fare. I read more general fiction than the average person, of course, but it is hardly my favorite genre. Stories that take place in the the natural world in the present day primarily only interest me if the characters are somehow engaging.
None of the characters in Portobello are all that engaging.
In fact, most of the characters in this novel are rather dull. Even the characters who are supposed to be creepy or menacing or depressing are simply boring. A mental patient who may or may not be possess by an angel (which should have enthralled me) made me want to turn off the recording, and the art dealing candy addict was so pathetic that I had little sympathy for him. Yes, human foibles are often petty and small in this way, and they can become fodder for the best literature. However, to transform the minutiae of normal life into the stuff of art takes more skill that Ruth Rendell applied to this writing (although I hear some of her other books are much better).
Now, to be fair, if what you are looking for is a broad view of the setting itself, Portobello Road and its environs, then this is actually pretty good. I learned a lot about the neighborhoods and demographics of the area, and it is always interesting to compare different segments of the same society.
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