Elizabeth

John Banville’s excellent writing suffers from being read in an inappropriate manner

Revisado: 10-07-24

Narrator was too mannered and over-dramatic. A more low-key narration would have been better suited to Banville’s prose.

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Defective Audio

Revisado: 01-04-23

This audiobook was missing all or part of the last chapter (I couldn't figure out which).

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Narrator Not Up to the Job

Revisado: 12-01-22

Penelope Dellaporta reads Cover Her Face in an old-fashioned style more suited to Agatha Christie than P.D. James. In addition, when reading dialogue, she does not do a creditable job with male voices. James describes Inspector Dalgliesh as having a deep voice, yet if you didn't know what you were listening to, you might think that the voice you were hearing was that of a woman. It's hard to understand why Dellaporta was given the job of narratimg the first ten Adam Dalgliesh novels; P.D. James deserves better.

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Too much psychologizing

Revisado: 08-21-22

The plot is intriguing and the scene setting is vivid and effective, but the novel is dragged down by the characters' endless ruminations on their own psychology and relationships. This is not the way a really gifted writer portrays her characters. (The narration, however, is much better than the writing.)

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Not as good as Staalesen's later novels

Revisado: 08-17-22

Though Bitter Flowers was published in English only this year, it is actually one of Staalesen's earlier novels, having come out in Norwegian in 1991, and it is not nearly as good as the later Varg Veum novels. It is way overwritten—too many elaborate similes—and Mark Meadow's melodramatic narration doesn't help. (The narrator for the earlier audiobooks in English, Colin Mace, was much better.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Great Performances, So-So Story

Revisado: 07-02-22

The problem with all the Johah Sheens novels is that while the chapters on the activities of the detectives are very good, they alternate with chapters about the victims, suspects and witnesses, and these characters are almost invariably so silly and shallow that it's hard to care much about them, so that I find myself impatient for these tedious chapters to end. In addition, the author's emphasis on the beauty of the female characters who are attractive to men is retrograde. It's the twenty-first century; time to endow your characters with other sources of appeal.

The narrators for the series, on the other hand, are very good, particularly John Hopkins—the pleasure in listening to him to some degree offsets the vapidity of many of the characters.

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Unpersuasive Portrayal of the 1960s

Revisado: 04-16-22

As sometimes happens when writers of an earlier generation try to be up to date by portraying the 1960s in their work, Rendell is here quite unsuccessful. It would have been better if the Chief Inspector Wexford books had stayed in the 1950s, an era Rendell understands better and portrays more persuasively.

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Dated Conceptions of Sex and Gender

Revisado: 04-16-22

Dated conceptions of sex and gender make this Chief Inspector Wexford mystery unpersuasive and actually distasteful.

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Entertaining Story Marred by Misuse of Language

Revisado: 03-27-22

This otherwise entertaining story was marred for me by the author's frequently inaccurate use of words. For instance, when Marion awakes in bad shape because someone had spiked her drink the night before, the author tells us that "Marion had never looked so destitute." And this is just one of many such instances. (Where was the copy-editor?!!)

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Excellent Writer, Excellent Narrator

Revisado: 12-22-17

Where does An Imaginative Experience rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It is among the best.

Any additional comments?

Mary Wesley is such a good writer; it's a shame that this is the only one of her novels that Audible has in an unabridged version.

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