Angelique Bamberg

Flawed Narration Distracts from a Good Story

Revisado: 07-21-13

I listened to this book with my family on a cross-country road trip during which we visited one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder home sites. Like a previous reviewer, I had read the book before in print form and enjoyed it. I bought the audiobook because I thought it would make good, all-ages listening to round out the experience of visiting the Wilder farm and museum.

Wendy McClure's story of her voyage in "Laura World" is interesting, enjoyable, and often amusing. I could relate to her interest in discovering the true, lived experience behind the children's books now that she - McClure - is an adult. The character of her boyfriend also works to make the book accessible to people (like my husband) who have not read the "Little House" books. The boyfriend's portrayal as a game, wry sidekick on McClure's obsessive journey brings additional humor to the story, as well as the perspective of someone reading Wilder's work for the first time, unencumbered by the layers of memory and association that drive McClure to churn butter, pore over satellite images of the Big Woods, and travel to tiny towns all over the upper midwest in order to better know Laura and the places she once inhabited. I would recommend "The Wilder Life" - the print version - to anyone curious about the traces the real Laura Ingalls Wilder left in the modern world alongside her famous children's books.

However, I cannot recommend the audiobook. Teri Clark Linden gives the impression of being a competent actor but an inexperienced reader, or at least one who is unfamiliar with the material of this book. She does a credible midwestern accent, but her narration constantly distracts with mispronounced words, words that any native English speaker, let alone a professional narrator, should know: it's PURported, not PREported; "ingenuity" is pronounced like "ingenious," not the French "ingenue," etc. In sentences, she also frequently misplaces the emphasis on words in ways that obscure the meaning of McClure's writing. Such obvious mistakes suggest that Linden did not bother to familiarize herself with the book before she recorded it and made me wonder if audiobooks aren't edited in any way.

Possibly worst of all, to my ears, was her constant use? of that upward questioning intonation? even in sentences that weren't questions? making McClure come across like a 20-year old student, not a 40-year-old professional writer and editor, herself. All in all, a frustrating listening experience in which the flaws of the narration stood in the way of my enjoyment of the material. I am glad I based my initial impression of McClure on my own reading of her book.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 7 personas