Up there with Any Human Heart

William Boyd on brilliant form. Highly entertaining story, excellent narration including multiple accents. Can only recommend.

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Interesting life

I very much enjoyed this book. The story of a true romantic.
Definitely recommend this book.

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A great romp across the century

I am a big fan of William Boyd and feverishly wait for the next novel. I listen when I am running and love a book where I can lose myself. This certainly met the brief, as I was transported back to the 19th Cenury to many adventures with our hero.
The narration was brilliant and ideally suited to Cashel and his contempories. Overall my listening was a very satisfying experience.
Whilst 'Any Human Heart' remains my favourite Boyd novel, I have listened to it too many times now. The Romantic is up there with the best of them and a repeat listen in a year or so will no doubt add to my enjoyment of this story.

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AMAZING

That was the most tremendous novel. Wonderfully narrated. I am so sad that it came to an end.

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“What do we leave behind us when we die?”

Boyd excels in his ability to maintain a narrative; never better than when the back-bone is the life of an individual. So it is here with the life of Cashel Greville Ross. This is a novel of adventures, incidents, glories and disappointments. So much doing in one person’s life. There is a question that haunts the listener (or reader) in how far to rely on the main character’s views and interpretation of events. He is certainly a character that is prone and likely to follow his heart, not necessarily to his benefit or credit. But this is not a novel about a ‘hero’, but a man that is energetic, passionate, adventurous, and fallible. There is significant room to wonder about other people’s motives. The narratives pulls like a train. This is also a novel where the main character finds himself in significant events in history, or in the company of several famous people. The closing pages of this novel, then, do pose the general question that Boyd raises himself, “What do we leave behind us when we die?” Our hearts go out to Cashel Greville Ross and there is a something of a chill which might cause the listener’s own introspection. Can a life well lived, following the heart be adequate substitute to a known legacy? Character and narrative with Boyd are well honed and there will be no concerns in this novel. As often the case, Boyd may use a word or phrase that makes you wonder or to look it up. All to the good. The performance of this audio-book by Kobna Holbrook-Smith I wonderful, sympathetic, touching and so good. When some performers make a hash of deal with foreign pronunciations, here there is simple wonder as to how he achieves such confident authenticity. One of the several benefits from keeping to hand the hard-copy or electronic version of a book when listening to an audio-book is being able to glance back, or to see something that the audio-book omits. Sometimes the omission deprives the listener of that they might have wanted to hear. So is the case with ‘The Romantic’. The audio-book does not include the ‘author’s note of the hard-copy I had to hand and this is a loss. None the less, a wonderful book that with engage, maintain the listener's attention and intrigue. Try it.

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Fascinating

It took a while to ‘get into’ this William Boyd but then I found the adventures of Cashel Ross quite fascinating and exciting. Quite a long story but then it did cover 75 years of this man’s life. He visited and lived in so many different places in the 19th Century world, I needed to look them up on an atlas so a good geography lesson as well as a good listen.

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Narrator has a nice voice but his accents are terrible!

I would have quite happily have listened to the narrator’s voice if it had just the traces of the various accents used in the book.

In the event, his Irish, Scots, and pretty much every other affection he attempts are almost painful to hear.

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5 people found this helpful

Reminiscent of Any Human Heart

Although this reminded me of Any Human Heart, it somehow didn’t quite match the story. As others have said, the reader puts on terrible accents which is off putting earlier on in the book but shouldn’t deter the listener from listening!

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2 people found this helpful

Fun picaresque novel

Terrible narrator. Either that or the punctuation was rubbish. Shame. I finished it but towards the end my patience with the halting narration was stretched.

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1 person found this helpful

Great stirringly romantic yarn

Beautiful story of folly romance love in different cities and fascinating historical perspectives. A couple of annoying pronunciations eg “Don Juan” drove me bananas each time it was said pronouncing the J. And a few others, but overall it was good and worth a listen.

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