Wendy Hall

Wish this narrator did more of the series…

Revisado: 02-12-25

Maybe not as regrettable that this is the only Ck Scott Moncrief English translation of the Proust books, it’s too bad this is the only contribution this narrator gives to A Search of Lost Time. The Audible options of the rest of the books in English are left to more a narration which awkwardly shoe horns lower class British accents onto the servant class that occupy the stories, which is an exclusively British conundrum to have economic origin branded on the tongue, it has nothing to do with France, so it’s just strange. Anyhow you want this pairing for the remaining seven novels but oh well…

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Elegantly written, well paced, and just a touch trashy

Revisado: 10-06-24

This well-delivered book is of the suspense genre if that is one, a beach read for those of us reared on the high brow, with a whiff of trashy low brow pulp. The narrator of this book is performed just right by the lady tasked with the rather challenging feat of having to alter multiple voices between characters other than her nameless first person. I’ll now compare the Hitchcock movie adaptation with the recent Netflix production where that ravishingly handsome, degenerate cannibal is the romantic lead. I know it was definitely worth waiting to complete the book to do so.

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I’ll say the unspeakable—this book is overrated

Revisado: 08-23-24

As much as I wanted to love this book, I’m afraid the sum total left me underwhelmed. As an audio version it’s fine, and sure there’s some lovely passages and it held my interest while enduring yard work, but it wasn’t the seismic existential masterpiece that it is hyped up as.

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Improves towards the end

Revisado: 08-20-24

Almost gave up on it out of finding it redundant in spite of liking some passages, but it improves after the engagement is called off by the family and the conflict ensues

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Good while doing chores and errands

Revisado: 07-15-24

This is best enjoyed in an audio format and can be paid attention to while powering through errands or chores. I wouldn’t want to sit and give it precious reading time which isn’t to say I didn’t appreciate it, it’s just that I set the bar really high for whose words I sit and make time to read ie Nabokov, Byron or Hitchens.
It’s entertaining and compelling, and the incessant self regard that shapes the book can be forgiven, it’s basically a memoir with other contextual information about our relationship to death and the funeral industry worth the Audible credit for sure
I came to it wholly ignorant, people that have worked in this field may have a different response

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If u didnt apprecoate sound design before…

Revisado: 10-31-23

As a soundscape aficionado and amateur practicioner, this was very enjoyable and a nice alternative to reading before bed in the candlelight which can be stimulating and work against sleep.

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Narrator did her job well, best read along w/book

Revisado: 10-11-23

Some books can be listened to while doing chores, others merit the reinforcement of narration while reading to help drown out ambient noise and also with focus, this one is certainly the latter. Superior to the film which was encumbered by the mediocrity of Miss Knightley especially seeing that this came out during the height of her stardom. More salient to the book’s superiority is of course that it is a devastating Rashomon saga that ends with the elegiac agony of loss that comes with aging and it takes language to bring that alive with real force. That and the structural grace of the book is lost to a major motion picture as so they love to term it.

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Only wish more had been recorded

Revisado: 10-29-21

Part of me feels reticent to sing the praises of this knowing that my exposure to Byron is really limited to more time spent reading his biography than his work, (I wanted to make sure I had read his biography first, and I'm glad I did, ) but the truth is I'm restless and give up on books a lot as well as recorded ones, partly my own lack of mental discliple but I'm a tough customer, and I devoured this. and still listen to it over and over, and only wish there were more of them. Mr. Beale's voice had the right cadence for me for this work, enough variety in tone and stress without overdoing it but to diversify the musicality of the words, you can follow the patterns and beats very clearly. All that said, Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte was my third favorite, Darkness the second, and The Dream had clearly won the gold.

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Poor decision re: end notes & dual narrators

Revisado: 02-20-20

I should have been more careful and read the negative reviews first before just using my credits to buy this, it was insufferable. Dawkins made a misguided decision by inserting end notes throughout this audiobook, but not at the end. Using his voice and this woman's back and forth, when he speaks it's the end notes he added recently. When she does it's the orignal 1975 text. The result is just maddening. I first skipped over what seemed like an endless introduction that was just talking about what the book was about exhaustively and superfluously, because the subject interested I didn't need any more damn build up. Then when the first chapter came it seemed to be repeating this process.

A real disappointment because it would have been nice just to hear the original book without it being clusterfuc&ed with this hyper self aware notion that you have to create all these god damn end notes. That and I really hate dual narrators, I don't like it.

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