Monica Nolan

Inspiring acknowledgment of reality

Revisado: 01-06-25

I loved the realism of the difficult times, the acknowledgement, the lack of sweetness.. the valuing of the human disposition .. and the positivity of trust in the cycles of life or nature or people or the self.. My only reservation was that, amid a superbly interpreted narration, the reader’s mispronunciation of words like ‘cailleach’ jarred.. there were just a few.. but they implied less than oneness with the text.

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Faithful (mostly)..

Revisado: 11-15-24

Largely wonderful… but the reader is questionable… is his accent a good match? His voice / accent are perfect but his intination is somewhat paternalistic and therefore risks a perception of condescension. Another irritation was the at times pronunciation, for example, ‘briquettes’ should have been rhymed with ‘rickets’ to fit with the usage of the time…

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The narration by William Maxwell himself…No other voice could do it so authentically..

Revisado: 09-08-24

Depth of character development, the reflective pace, the realism… and so much more… Thank you..

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What jarred in the recording?

Revisado: 04-17-24

The voice reading Phil - this was so unpleasant that judgement on Phil’s character was made without reference to - or waiting for - his depiction in the text. Otherwise, narration wonderful - seems obvious that Anne Enright KNOWS her own work… more insights with each hearing. Thank you.

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My wish to stop listening!

Revisado: 01-07-24

The tediousness and directionless of the story made it very difficult to persist to the end, despite the excellent performance given by the reader. I would have given up, had it not been a Reading Group choice.

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Bad choice of narrator…

Revisado: 04-13-23

I have struggled to listen as far as chapter 3. The narrator’s inconsistency of accent and sheer unsuitable base voice make it so unpleasant on the ear. Then there’s the peculiar pronunciation of words, eg dog as dawg, And father as fawther. Dreadfully hard to listen to…
I need to finish this novel but would otherwise discard and not inflict on anyone else…

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Huge depth, insight and perception.

Revisado: 11-19-22

I chose the less than 5-star rating for performance because of the jarring of the reader’s pronunciation as narrator. Her repeated softening of the final ‘t’ in words like ‘heart’ and ‘part’ was at odds with the ‘feel’ of the book. They belong to a certain elitist accent. It seemed as if the content of what she read was unrelated to her, as if her ‘commentary’ was not integral to the characters and context. Her performance of the dialogue between and inside the individuals was excellent, after an initial stage Irishness in tone. I would have liked to hear Donal Ryan himself read this absorbing and insightful novel.

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Dreadful narrator & version

Revisado: 06-05-21

I would like to return this to Audible please. I quickly want to re-read the original to excise these awful voices from my mind.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Way too self-indulgent!

Revisado: 09-06-20

Seems like a challenge that Anthony Horowitz set himself . He did create and tie up of kinds of links, cleverly - but life too short to care...very tedious..

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Tedious Reading

Revisado: 10-04-19

The novel has got such praise in book reviews that I can only attribute its tediousness in this version to the narrator. Such a monotone delivery failed to enliven and even failed to clearly delineate one character from another. I won’t be reading or hearing any more Tessa Hadley - this, A’s I’ve said above, may well be attributable to the narrator rather than to the author.

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