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Better on the page

Revisado: 11-03-24

This is a good example of a book that is not well suited to the audio book format. It is dense with information and would benefit from the ability to easily reference back to earlier pages and to consult context material (maps, illustrations, etc). Given the format limitations, the reading is good, but it would be better as a physical book.

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A Margolyes tour de force

Revisado: 09-21-23

Some regard Bleak House as his greatest work, and it is most certainly Dickens through and through, but it is less than it could have been. On display is greatness in its teeming cast of characters and its devastating critique of a bloated, parasitic court system. But, as many have observed, it is also diminished by the same cloying sentimentality that is never held at bay for long in all of Dickens.

The real triumph here is the exceptional performance by a great actor, which is displayed in the reading. Listening to Miriam Margolyes as she both narrates the text and gives every character a unique and perfectly executed voice is an enthralling experience. Listen for Tulkinghorn and Vholes, those ornaments of the legal profession, and the old miser Smallweed, to name only three from so many

The book might be uneven, but the reading soars to rare excellence.

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A man without interest

Revisado: 05-20-23

To judge from the early chapters (I could suffer no more) of this very long (yet unfinished, apparently) book the titular man without qualities is also, sadly, without restraint. Verbose without mercy when expressing his unfailingly dull views about equally dull subjects, he is relentless.

A trifle of little interest expanded to gargantuan proportions, this book is surely one of 20th century literature's greatest marathons of tedium.

If you are inclined to tackle a great project in your reading (or audio book listening) then choose Proust. Don't waste your time and interest on a turgid relic that belongs under a thick dust cover.

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Marry in haste, repent at leisure

Revisado: 05-20-23

A book of its era, this often low energy account of an American abroad on a grand tour of Europe in the 1920s, combines travel observations with an inner yearning for emotional fulfilment.

As he travels with his shallow, social climbing wife the industrialist Dodsworth begins to question all the simple conventions and platitudes of American boosterism. He also begins to see his wife clearly for the first time.

This is not the author's best work. The satire is very dated and, although it develops some emotional power toward the end, it takes a long time to get there.

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Virtue sorely tested

Revisado: 01-15-23

Published almost 20 years before both The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and Voltaire's Candide, in different ways, Fielding's novel anticipates each of those better known works.

A rambling, episodic account of Joseph A, a young man of low birth but staunch virtue and pure love for his sweetheart, it has fun with hypocrisy. On the road from London to re-unite with his love, he is assailed from all quarters by every form of human mendacity and folly. Confronted by high lust and low guile, his only support is the ever present moral guidance supplied by his mentor, a long-winded clergyman with a propensity for Latin quotation and getting into scrapes.

Prolix (in the manner of the day) at times, but never less than entertaining. Enhanced by a good reading, it is a witty listening experience.

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Scenes from the human comedy

Revisado: 09-04-22

Murdoch was a prolific novelist but, as a professional philosopher, her inclination always seemed to be to use the same frame of reference. Read one and you will not be surprised by the others.

In this case she again sets up a comfortable world of characters from the English upper middle class. They live the London life in houses where dinner parties are common, money is not discussed and ideas are bantered about at arms length. But the author then sets a series of troubling disruptions in motion and we witness the anguish and contortions that follow. The human comedy is ever present and no puppet may call the tune.

So, not a short novel and it seems to take quite a time to get going but, once it does, it becomes absorbing and, by the end, there is a sense of loss as it concludes. All of the best fiction is like that, but Murdoch's rarified and now, perhaps also a little dated, world will not be to all tastes. However, if you accept the terms of engagement, this is a satisfying, literate and very well narrated entertainment.

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In the rear view mirror

Revisado: 06-20-22

Vidal was born into the world of the Washington insider and he became an ascerbic observer of the passing parade and the pursuit of power.

This play is a concise view of a power struggle at a nominating convention. Seeking the presidency are two very different candidates: the first an ivy league man of principle, the second an unscrupulous populist.

A snapshot of a time which now seems uncomplicated, a time when idealism permitted compromise and better days might still lie ahead.

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Not quite a classic but exceptional of its kind

Revisado: 06-10-22

This third book of the Deptford Trilogy is, at times, a little pedestrian in its examination of the life and times of the previously enigmatic master illusionist Marcus Isengrim.

Like the earlier books, this one also maintains a narrative path that is not easy to define. It mixes realist fiction with elements of fantasy to create a world where Jungian dream symbols are often present.

The reading is a solid achievement given the great variety of characters and accents involved.

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Sameness and boredom

Revisado: 05-02-22

I didn't finish this book. I'd had it by around the 20 per cent mark with the whining, sour ramblings of Barney as he doles out his version of his personal history.

A Jew who grew up in Canada and went to Paris in the 1950s to immerse himself in the Left Bank arts scene, Barney has his memories.
Now he is sharing with us in a first person voice (think Philip Roth doing an extended late night stand up routine) that maintains a sameness and soon courts boredom. Witty he is not. Deft, no. Interesting? Only in a desultory sort of way.

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