Lingua Franca

A Hidden Gem

Review by: The Audiobook ReviewLingua 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.

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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.