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Engrossing & Very Well Written

Revisado: 05-27-23

This book is fascinating. The author has made it so personal that you will be caught up in the saga as well as touched by the events and people involved.

Also the reader is 110% superb!

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To Read Taylor Caldwell is to Love Her...

Revisado: 08-10-20

...to not read or listen to her works is to lose the opportunity to experience the great mind of a very unique woman.

I cannot say enough about this book, this storytelling, this written prose, this narrator, and Taylor Caldwell.

A Gem of a Book and a Star of a Reader!

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Brilliant and Creatively Unique...

Revisado: 07-08-20

...are the words I choose to describe this excellent piece of work. McCarthy is not just a storyteller but an artistic wordsmith, and excellent at both. He does more than use a word, he paints his words and then shades them to perfection, and yet tells a story.

Any reader who can find fault with this Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece does not know how to read or digest literature.

This is a solid piece of storytelling, using a subject that is threatening and horrible, and yet within it the writer weaves several tales of love and spirituality. It’s required high school and freshman college literature for a solid reason.

Two thumbs and all fingers way up to Cormac McCarthy and his narrator who has made this audiobook a classic in its own time.

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I Am Deeply Moved...

Revisado: 06-22-20

...by the story of Gary Gilmore. For me it is that simple. He was a lost boy, a victim of poverty, alcoholism, both his own and his father’s, and lost in the unenlightened and punitive juvenile court system in his early and formative years. He really had no chance.

Putting aside any negative comments made by a few listeners related to a minor errors or mispronunciations by narrator, M. Hamilton, the account as written and as read is a solid masterpiece of storytelling and an insightful revealing of every personality in the story.

It was profoundly impacting to me but I must admit that I have known young men like Gary as in fact in the early 1960’s I was a juvenile delinquent that came close to a life of crime, incarceration, and almost an early death.

Gary Gilmore is one of many, and yet as he is portrayed in the book he is unique, inasmuch as he was institutionalized and programmed by the penal system and yet a spiritual and humanistic individual, a rare combination.

Where Gary was lost, I got a few breaks and I’m almost 70 years old today, with a past life of standard ups and downs and today solidly middle class and a transplant from California to Salt Lake City Utah and converted in the LDS Church.

Regardless I didn’t know anything about Gary until listening to this book so my decision to go to Utah had nothing to do with the book, but now having listened, I can also say that it is an accurate portrayal of LDS life as well as the liberal non-LDS life in Utah even in 2020.

I say all of this about Gary, LDS, Utah, and my own experiences because this book nailed it. Although it was written essentially half of a century ago, it is as contemporary as a slice of pizza.

As a writer and storyteller Mailer got it right and Hamilton did an excellent job even with his errors if you see his narration not as a recitation of Mailer but as as an individual “someone” who might have been a casual observer among the story’s characters, that fly on the wall who sees and knows all and speaks the same way with the same accents and impediments as the characters do.

In any case the book will reverberate inside of my soul forever just as Gary Gilmore and Nicole Baker Barrett and both their families will, now that I’ve met all in these pages.

In closing, I must add that I was also left very touched, bruised and saddened by the losses of Gary’s two young, good-hearted murder victims. There is nothing that can be said to alleviate the pain of these young deaths or the impact to their loved ones. Their loss is as much a source of grief for a listener as is the life Gary endured.

This book is a “must listen” for anyone that is seeking insight into the perils of ignorance, poverty, alcoholism, marijuana addiction, pedophilia, the penal, judicial, and prison systems, and related resulting generational impact on the family and children.

I highly recommend.

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Unintelligible Theatrics...

Revisado: 05-06-20

...as with the others who suffered with this “production,” and panned it, I was equally disappointed as I mistakenly thought it was a narration and not a staged and sound mixed radio play.

I wanted a solid reading of this classic piece of literature, perhaps with a single reader’s occasional shift into different characters, but not a incomprehensible cockney skit littered with sound effects.

As an actor and writer myself I give kudos to the performances but as an Audible listener I want books read to me.

Thank the gods it was free or I’d be livid and not simply wholly bored and disappointed.

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I am Surprised...

Revisado: 04-25-20

...at some of the complaints and negative reviews of this novella.

It was quick, unique and well told by the author and narrator. The story itself was contemporary and highly plausible.

Characters were equally believable as was the plot and climax.

It was good work and worth the listen.

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Same Old, Same Old...

Revisado: 04-25-20

This was another rehash of the now age-old, worn contemporary story of drug abuse in the U.S., in itself a tragedy but not one that is just or fair to blame on the pharmaceutical firms that developed the medicines for relief of pain or therapeutic treatment. Drug abuse is not the fault of society or its institutions.

As for the presentation, it was boring and redundant at best, and like so many of the documentary style readings on this venue, much of the interviews are inaudible and unintelligible. Were they not I may have less of a negative reaction.

As it was I should have discarded it within the three minutes of its gibberish prologue but I was reasonable enough to attempt to listen for fifteen more minutes before I junked it.

I am sorry for those that have suffered and been the victims of their own abuse but at the same time, I am aghast that this author would waste her own time or any reader’s time and intelligence in another hack attempt of “exposing” the “drug crisis.”

A waste of megabits.

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Taylor Caldwell Never Did Fail to Deliver

Revisado: 04-21-20

I’ve been a Taylor Caldwell fan since first reading “Great Lion of God” in print.

In her Biblical accounts of the two apostles, Paul in this narrative, and Luke in “Dear and Glorious Physician,” Taylor takes us back into Israel and through many of the gentile lands of the Middle East.

She develops complex and compassionate biographies of these two troubled men and offers insights into the many other sages that influenced them, leading to their ultimate destinies, their awakening to Christ as the promised Messiah and their personal savior, and then their individual transformations.

Using the backdrops of faltering Roman rulership, the lingering influences of the earlier Hellenistic Period, and strict ancient protocols of the Jews, we see glimpses into the superstitions, mysticism and culture of the period we know now to be when Jesus of Nazareth changed the world.

Taylor Caldwell was gifted. Her writings are filled with the love of God and humanity, but never sugar-coated. They were researched well by her own quests in the Holy Lands.

My only complaint with this audiobook was the narrator fell short in comparison with others who have narrated her writings. He simply did not have the acting skills that her writings demand. This was disappointing to me for such a classic piece of literature, but I didn’t let it destroy my interest in the book.

I recommend either book to any who want to dig deeper beyond the Scriptures.

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Bright, Brilliant & Hilarious

Revisado: 04-07-20

Loved the basic concept of this story, finding our life’s answers inadvertently while on the path of searching for them; but beyond that I loved the Holy Man himself, a seeming guru but with simple and practical messages one might expect from any wisened old man who might be living next door.

The story was well built and entertaining, as well as enlightening to its actual characters in their quests and readers alike.

The actors’ voice over works and character developments were outstanding and narrator was clear and concise.

A great listen. Would have liked another ten hours of this great entertainment!

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Another Heartwarming Winner

Revisado: 03-24-20

I’m biased because I’m a huge fan of Taylor Caldwell, however, let me say as a reader in general that this book kept me returning to it constantly to find out what was next to occur in the lives of the well fleshed out characters.

Like most of Taylor’s books, she set this during an important transitional period in the history of the world and always was sure to weave a believable tale that captured the characters in the historical vortex and in turn captures the reader and takes him or her along for a storytelling journey and a solid history lesson.

Any reader of historical fiction is advised to soak up the author’s love for writing.

The narrator was excellent in his ability to portray different accents and personalities as the characters and also tell the story.

Bravo.

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