A question I've often asked myself

From Kate Atkinson's chilling new novel When Will There Be Good News?, in a scene where a man drives through the hinterland in a rented car:

There was no signal on his phone, and the radio had given out nothing but crackle and hiss for some time now. The CD player contained one disc accidentally left over from the previous rental, and Jackson wondered in what circumstances he would feel so desperate for the sound of another voice that he would listen to Enya's.

(For Enya fans, this is just a little joke, occasioned by the view in our household that the most reliable gender marker is not in fact the Y-chromosome but rather an appetite for County Donegal's answer to Kenny G. No joke, though, Atkinson's book is remarkable.)