INCREDIBLE IMAGINING OF A TRUE STORY.

This novel is based on Arthur Conan Doyle's extraordinary real-life fight for justice. Arthur and George grow up worlds and miles apart in late 19th-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer, George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age; George remains in hardworking obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages.
Julian Barnes is a great author. The Sense of an Ending is a really powerful book and it still haunts me to this day. With this book he has taken a true story and fictionalised the prejudice of a late Victorian Britain that is relevant today, I do not know if ALL the other characters are real, but Barnes gives them a depth that for me came off the page. I swear I could see every one of them in my head. Excellent. Highly recommended.

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Poor narration

Wonderful story but read the book if you have the time. The narrator fails to pronounce local (to me) place names such as Hednesford and Cannock which is kind of unforgivable. Also the performance lacks any feeling or nuance despite being such an interesting story.

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Poor Scottish accent

This was a wonderful, interesting, well-written, well- researched and engaging story - but why place the burden of so many accents on a narrator who flagged and failed to maintain even consistency with the bizarre renditions of Scottish and even rural English accents? His characterisation of rural people a slow, dull and halting, or sly and prejudiced and venal did no justice to the author’s intent.
However the story held my interest past the distraction of accents and somewhat strange pronunciation and I followed it to the end.

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11 people found this helpful

I wonder how a contemporary account would read?

This is a fictionalised account of events that occurred in the early 20th century. I have no idea what sources where available to the author has applied a 21st C filter in the thoughts and dialogue of the main protagonists. Perhaps I am just uncomfortable with 'faction' but I didn't have this problem with Robert Harris's An Officer and a Spy, his retelling of the Dreyfus case. That aside, my nain problem was with the standard of the narration which somewhat spoiled my listening experience. As many others have stated, there were a number of odd pronunciations, the accents were completely off and emphases often placed in the wrong part of the sentence. I am not blaming the narrator who was probably trying to do his best but rather whoever is responsible for producing this. I would definitely be sending this back if I hadn't got this on an offer.

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3 people found this helpful

Interesting

Interesting but boring in places, I really struggled to finish it. The narrator had a good voice but some of the names on towns he didn't pronounce them right. I am from Wolverhampton & quite often go to Wales Aberystwyth certainly wasn't pronounced right & it was certainly annoying hearing him saying it.

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1 person found this helpful

I enjoyed it quite a lot but it’s just a little too long.

It was a surprise enjoyment for me as it had sat in my library for quite a while. I warmed to the narrator although I’m from the area and Cannock is definitely not pronounced like that! Getting place names and accents correct would make quite a big difference to the listener. I’d love to know if the author has any say in who narrates their texts.

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Good book - shame about the narrator

I found this story very slow at the beginning, but once I got into it I really enjoyed it. The descriptions of the protagonists' childhoods are important background, but for a long while it felt as if nothing was happening. Julian Barnes is a great writer and this was a most interesting dramatisation of a true story.
However, as others have already mentioned, the narration was poor. I could cope with the odd accents (except Anson who sounded like a comedy charicature), but the wrong emphases in many of the sentences and the occasional mis-pronunciation really grated. I appreciate that when reading aloud it's sometimes difficult to know where a sentence is going, but professional narrators should read ahead and when mistakes are made they should be corrected and re-recorded. Is this Audible doing things on the cheap?

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2 people found this helpful

Good story but unfortunate reader

This was a good story from Julian Barnes but unfortunately the reader was very poor. He misread and mispronounced words, his accents were not good and he broke up sentences so that they became meaningless. Is there no director or editor to check these things? This is not the first time the lack of literacy of the reader has spoilt audio books for me. Come on audible, get some quality control.

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8 people found this helpful

Dear Julian

If I had written an excellent book and wanted to share it with audiophiles I would have been more scrupulous in finding the right narrator.
Whilst the reader has a pleasant voice he delivers possibly the worst accents I have ever heard. In addition his pronunciation is so bad I have drawn strange looks shouting out random words in my annoyance! Consequently I could only listen at home…..
Perhaps you were unable to exert influence on the producers of this audiobook- if so, that’s a shame.
I hope people can get past this and listen to the end- it’s difficult but still worth the effort!

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16 people found this helpful

Fascinating tale

This is a fascinating, true, tale with painstaking research, which records an important, but overlooked, chapter in the development of the modern justice system.
The characters are superbly drawn. The attention to detail is admirable, but for me overworked. For me it would have been improved with some of the repetition removed.
The narrator is generally excellent, but marred by a number of surprising mispronunciations and excruciating ‘Scottish’ and/or ‘Irish’ accents which were frankly embarrassing in this type of production.

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6 people found this helpful