Deborah
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Macbeth: A Novel
- De: A. J. Hartley, David Hewson
- Narrado por: Alan Cumming
- Duración: 9 h y 43 m
- Versión completa
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Macbeth: A Novel brings the intricacy and grit of the historical thriller to Shakespeare’s tale of political intrigue, treachery, and murder. In this full-length novel written exclusively for audio, authors A. J. Hartley and David Hewson rethink literature’s most infamous married couple, grounding them in a medieval Scotland whose military and political upheavals are as stark and dramatic as the landscape in which they are played.
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Narrator choice inspired
- De Beverly en 07-10-11
- Macbeth: A Novel
- De: A. J. Hartley, David Hewson
- Narrado por: Alan Cumming
Not Your Mother's Shakespeare (but still enjoyable
Revisado: 05-08-12
There seems to be a run of Shakespearean adaptations in fiction of late. In addition to this one, I recently reviewed 'Iago' by David Snodden, and 'I, Iag'o by Nicole Galland. 'Macbeth: A Novel' is the collaborative creation of British crime writer A. J. Hartley and David Hewson, a professor of Shakespeare who writes thrillers in his spare time. Although I'm not a reader of either genre, I am a Shakespearean and know the play very well. I wasn't quite sure what to expect of 'Macbeth: A Novel'; after all, no one can improve upon Shakespeare, and many of the adaptations I've read are either laughable or maddening. So I was pleasantly surprised and even enjoyed this one--perhaps particularly because I listened to the audiobook, wonderfully read by Alan Cumming, who for once was free to revel in his glorious Scottish accent.
Hewson and Hartley stick pretty closely to the bare bones of the plot that we are all familiar with, but they take free reign in filling in the "offstage" details. For example, the first third of the book puts readers right in the middle of the civil rebellion and Norse invasion that have been going on as the play opens. We see Macbeth and Banquo fighting in the field; we see Macbeth's capture of the rebel Macdonwald, the blow-by-blow fight to his bloody death preceded by a verbal exchange that prefigures Macbeth's own treacherous acts. Shakespeare, on the contrary, perfunctorily has messengers deliver the news of Macbeth's victories to King Duncan. Back on the home front, the authors give Lady Macbeth a name of her own (Skena). They provide an answer to the oft-asked question, "Where are Lady Macbeth's children?" And they give us plenty of chat between the couple that helps us to understand the powerful forces between them. Interior flashbacks also flesh out the Macbeths' individual biographies, and frequently we're made privy as to what is going on in their minds. Hewson and Hartley imaginatively--but not fantastically--fill in the blanks: why exactly Macbeth turns on Banquo, what happens to Fleance after his father's murder, who the weird sisters are and how they came to be witches, what daily life is like at Macduff's castle before the assassins arrive, and more.
I won't be recommending this book as a classic, or even a must-read. The style is probably better suited to crime novels and thriller: a bit too 'colorful' and 'overwrought,' shall we say, for my taste. Yet it fits just fine with the story of Macbeth. This was a fun piece to breeze through at the end of the semester, which is always a stressful time for me. If the idea of a thriller-crime novel version of Macbeth, read in a charming and authentic Scottish accent by a fine actor, appeals to you, I say, go for it!
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A Town Like Alice
- De: Nevil Shute
- Narrado por: Neil Hunt
- Duración: 12 h y 25 m
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Eight hundred women and children begin a 1,200-mile journey on foot across Japanese-occupied Malaya. At journey’s end, only 30 will still be alive. This is the story of one woman, of her ordeal, and of how she was saved by the sacrifice of an Australian soldier. It is a story of rare individual courage in the face of certain death, and hope in the face of despair.
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Classic and still entertaining
- De John S en 05-13-14
- A Town Like Alice
- De: Nevil Shute
- Narrado por: Neil Hunt
A Story of Courage and Commitment
Revisado: 03-27-12
Initially, I was totally captivated by this story of Jean Padgett, a young English woman working in Malaya who became a Japanese prisoner of war. The hardships that the women and children endured during their trek to one nonexistent prison camp after another and the alternating kindness and inhumanity of their captors kept me reading (well, listening; this was an audiobook) at a rapid pace. Under such an unlikely circumstances, one wouldn't expect to fall in love, but we do sense that it is happening to Jean when she means a resourceful Australian named Joe Harmon. But the war intervenes . . .
The novel opens with the narrator, a solicitor, tracking down Jean to tell her that she has just come into an inheritance, and it is to Noah that Jean tells her story. After hearing all she endured, he could hardly be more surprised when Jean tells him her plans for the money: to return to Malaya.
I won't spoil the book by telling what happens next, but there are quite a few surprises in store. I have to admit that the last third of the novel--the part that reflects the title--was somewhat less interesting to me. Still, this is one of those books whose title was familiar but about which I knew nothing, and overall, it was worthwhile.
Very well read by Neil Hunt. He does the accents well and isn't roo heavy-handed in reading the female roles.
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The Attack
- De: Yasmina Khadra
- Narrado por: Stefan Rudnicki
- Duración: 7 h y 13 m
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Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a respected, dedicated surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. He has learned to live with the violence that plagues his city and works tirelessly to help the victims brought to the emergency room. But one night, a deadly bombing in a local restaurant takes a horrifyingly personal turn, when his wife's body is found among the dead, bearing injuries that match those typically found on the bodies of fundamentalist suicide bombers.
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Powerful
- De Diana - Audible en 04-17-12
- The Attack
- De: Yasmina Khadra
- Narrado por: Stefan Rudnicki
Clichés Galore
Revisado: 01-02-12
Khadra has chosen an interesting subject: the reaction of an Israeli-Palestinian doctor to learning that his wife was a suicide bomber. Unfortunately, the novel is fairly predictable, the characters stereotypical and not particularly believable, and the writing (or perhaps it's the translation)--well, it's rather overwritten. I wanted to like this book and wanted to feel that I was coming to some important point or understanding from the experience of reading it, but (like Amin) I guess I never really got it, aside from some rather florid and generic statements about nationalism and humiliation.
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The Scandal of the Season
- De: Sophie Gee
- Narrado por: Cameron Stewart
- Duración: 10 h y 6 m
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The young aspiring poet Alexander Pope crosses paths with the coquettish Arabella and man-about-town Lord Petre at a masquerade ball. It's 1711, and the fashionable citizens of London, weary of recent political and social upheaval, are intent on simply pursuing enjoyment. But society in general is not accepting of any attraction that can't restrain itself behind at least a veneer of respectability, and Arabella and Lord Petre's intense attraction is both unacceptable and dangerous.
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Misery
- De Romance Fan en 03-05-08
- The Scandal of the Season
- De: Sophie Gee
- Narrado por: Cameron Stewart
Societal Portrait
Revisado: 01-02-12
A charming novel imagining the events that led to Pope's writing of "The Rape of the Lock." While the characters weren't very developed, I believe that the author may have been trying to recreate the superficiality that was so much a part of London society in the early eighteenth century. She gets the tone of conversation just right, with everyone genteely battling to be wittier than the next person and to be the center of polite attention. The continual jockeying for position among the belles, beaux, and literati seems appropriate, and the characters would have been more concerned with appearances and reputations than depth of character. Not a great novel, but an intriguing one.
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Doctor Thorne
- De: Anthony Trollope
- Narrado por: Timothy West
- Duración: 20 h y 51 m
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Doctor Thorne is the third audiobook in Anthony Trollope's series known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire. Long regarded as one of Trollope's greatest works, it is a complex story of love, greed and illegitimacy. Set in fictional Barsetshire, it concerns the romantic challenges facing Doctor Thorne's penniless niece, Mary, and Frank Gresham, the only son of the impoverished squire of Greshambury. Mary falls in love with Frank but he is constrained by the need to marry well to restore the family fortunes.
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Delightful Discovery
- De Susan en 05-20-09
- Doctor Thorne
- De: Anthony Trollope
- Narrado por: Timothy West
Predictable but Still Good
Revisado: 01-02-12
The third volume in Trollope's Barchester Chronicles, is, for the most part, a typical tale of young lovers separated by the rigid class distinctions of Victorian England. Frank Gresham, whose father has mismanaged the family fortune and is on the verge of losing his beloved estate, is expected to marry for money, but he has long loved Mary Thorne, the titleless, penniless niece of the local doctor. It all turns out well for them in the end, of course, as in such novels it usually does; but it's the many sidetracks and delightful characterizations and the way these are all intertwined that make so enjoyable. The perpetually intoxicated Sir Roger Scatchard, for example, a murderer who did his time, made a fortune in the railroads, and was granted a baronetcy, and his lovable, unaffected wife, Lady Scatchard, who enjoyed life much more as a wet nurse. Lady Gresham, who would willingly marry her children to nobodies--as long as they came with enough cash to save the estate. The down-to-earth Miss Dunstable, heir to the Oil of Lebanon fortune, who knows a golddigger when she sees one and encourages Frank to go with his heart. Uber-snob Amelia DeCourcey, who persuades her cousin Augusta Gresham that it is her duty to rejct the proposal of the lawyer, Mr. Gazeby--and then promptly marries him herself. Doctor Thorne himself takes the part of the voice of reason throughout. A rather predictable plot but still an enjoyable read.
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The Warden
- De: Anthony Trollope
- Narrado por: Simon Vance
- Duración: 7 h y 9 m
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Anthony Trollope's classic novel centers on Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity whose charitable income far exceeds the purpose for which it was intended. On discovering this, young John Bold turns his reforming zeal toward exposing what he regards as an abuse of privilege, despite the fact that he is in love with Mr. Harding's daughter, Eleanor.
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Delightful Reading of Trollope
- De Larbi en 09-15-07
- The Warden
- De: Anthony Trollope
- Narrado por: Simon Vance
The Series Begins . . .
Revisado: 01-02-12
The first of the Barchester series, The Warden seems obviously designed to set up the next five novels. It's fine on its own, but not the best of Trollope by any means. Mr. Harding, warden of an almshouse for 12 elderly disabled men, finds himself the target of a lawsuit promoted by his daughter's admirer. The claim is that the benefactor's will did not mean for the church to use the bequest to fund a warden, but that it was meant to go directly to the 12 men. Complicating the situation is the fact that the archdeacon, married to Harding's elder daughter, insists on fighting the suit, which gets nasty in the public press. The plot focuses on how Mr. Harding, a genuinely kind and good man, deals with the stress and his own conscience, and how his daughter Eleanor struggles between her fierce love for her father and her growing affection for John Bull, the lawyer behind the lawsuit.
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esto le resultó útil a 11 personas
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- A Novel
- De: Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
- Narrado por: Paul Boehmer, Susan Duerden, Rosalyn Landor, y otros
- Duración: 8 h y 6 m
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January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb.... As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends - and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is.
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MUCH better than I ever expected! Give it a try!
- De Kent en 10-19-09
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- A Novel
- De: Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
- Narrado por: Paul Boehmer, Susan Duerden, Rosalyn Landor, John Lee, Juliet Mills
Just OK
Revisado: 01-02-12
Let me begin by saying that I'm a sucker for novels written in letters, as this one is. This is a lovely little tale set mostly on the island of Guernsey, where the main character, a writer, has come in search of a subject for her next book. Like Juliet, I did not know much about the Channel Islands and how the residents lived under Nazi occupation during World War II. The characters were unique but generally beliveable. I might have liked the novel even better without the pat romantic ending, but I still give it a thumbs up.
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The Secret Scripture
- De: Sebastian Barry
- Narrado por: Wanda McCaddon
- Duración: 9 h y 44 m
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Roseanne McNulty, once one of the most beautiful and beguiling girls in County Sligo, Ireland, is now an elderly patient at Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital. As her 100th year draws near, she decides to record the events of her life, hiding the manuscript beneath the floorboards. Dr. Grene, Roseanne's caretaker, takes a special interest in her case. In his research, he discovers a document written by a local priest that tells a very different story of Roseanne's life than what she recalls.
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Haunting and Lovely
- De Amanda en 05-17-12
- The Secret Scripture
- De: Sebastian Barry
- Narrado por: Wanda McCaddon
Overwrought
Revisado: 01-02-12
My thoughts on this one are mixed. I might have rated it higher, but the unrealistic conclusion--a bit of a deus ex machina--lowered my opinion. Barry creates a fascinating character (or should I say victim?) in Roseanne, a 100-year old woman who has spent most of her life in an asylum that is about to close. The story is told from two points of view: Roseanne's, mostly in the form of pages she has written and concealed; and Dr. Grene, who is in charge of assessing Roseanne for either release or transfer to another institution. The cruelty and prejudice of mid-20th century rural Ireland permeates the novel, and at times, the suffering of Roseanne is almost too harsh to believe. I was left to wonder whether and how one person (Mrs. McNulty, Roseanne's one-time mother-in-law) could have had such moral power over an entire town. Perhaps Barry was trying a little too hard to write a hand-wringingly tragic Irish novel, so it seems he decided to leave his readers with an impossibly happily ever after ending.
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esto le resultó útil a 33 personas
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The Woodlanders
- De: Thomas Hardy
- Narrado por: Samuel West
- Duración: 14 h y 16 m
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Set in the Dorset landscape familiar to Hardy novels, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-do-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of a dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the mysterious Mrs Charmond further complicates the romantic entanglements, marital choice and class mobility become inextricably linked.
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Thomas Hardy lesser known work
- De Molly Aultz en 06-12-08
- The Woodlanders
- De: Thomas Hardy
- Narrado por: Samuel West
Your Typical Hardy Novel
Revisado: 01-02-12
This was a fairly typical Hardy novel: misplaced affections, broken hearts, overindulgent parents, class divisions, long lost lovers reunited, hints of scandal, etc. There's a bit of Gabriel Oak in Giles Winterborne (and, for that matter, a bit of Bathsheba Everdene in Grace Melbury). Still, I enjoyed the novel, which I listened to on audio, read by the wonderful Samuel West. The secondary female characters--particularly the spunky and loyal Marty South, but also Felice Charmond and Suke Damson--give the novel an added charm, but the conflicted, rather immature, manipulating and rather easily manipulated Grace Melbury really just needed a good smack.
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The Way I Found Her
- De: Rose Tremain
- Narrado por: Samuel West
- Duración: 12 h y 16 m
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English teenager Lewis spends the summer of 1994 exploring Paris while his mother translates a medieval romance. The workings of Lewis's mind provide an experience which is utterly out of the ordinary. Tremain also wrote Restoration and Sacred Country.
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Very Well Written--Enjoyable
- De Shery Kime-Goodwin en 05-21-09
- The Way I Found Her
- De: Rose Tremain
- Narrado por: Samuel West
Atypical for Tremain
Revisado: 01-02-12
If you think of Rose Tremain as mainly a writer of historical novels, this one will surprise you as much as it did me. In fact, I kept forgetting that I wasn't reading a novel by Ian McEwan. It's a coming-of-age story and a mystery of sorts, involving a 13-year old English boy and a 40-ish Russian medieval romance writer. Lewis Little is spending the summer in France while his mother, a Scottish beauty, translates Valentina's latest work. He becomes obsessed with Valentina--an obsession whose depiction seemed very McEwanesque to me. Then, suddenly, Valentina disappears, and Lewis, not willing to leave matters to the police, determines to find her . . .
I certainly didn't enjoy this as much as Tremain's historical novels like Music and Silence or Restoration, and I'm not much of a one for mysteries/crime novels. But overall, it kept my interest. And Samuel West is myh favorite narrator, which helped.
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