Amazing book, fair narration

I love Mansfield Park. For the price of this audiobook the narration was fair, despite a couple of mispronounced words.

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Very soothing read...except

For consistent mispronunciation of the word "Mary". if you did not know the book: you would think there were two characters called Marie and Mharie.
Although generally clear, sometimes lapses into American pronounciation

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EXCRUCIATING MANGLING OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Why on earth would it make sense for an American lady to be employed to read a classic English novel such as Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park?
Beth Kesler’s own website states that she is an “accent and dialect coach” in languages that include “received English pronunciation”. But from her reading, she clearly thinks that the word “sanguine” rhymes with “swine” rather than “thin” - and it is extraordinary that she does not know that “shew” is merely the 18th century spelling of “show” - and so pronounces it throughout the novel as “shoo”, which is agony to hear.
Ms Kesler also appears to believe that a Georgian lady would pronounce the word “enquiry” as “IN-querry”, which is laughable.
And you would think that anyone, let alone a so-called dialect coach, would know that the word “calm” should rhyme with “palm” - but from Ms Kesler’s lips, inexplicably, it becomes “corm”. Even the simple word “gone” is contorted into “gorn”, time after time throughout the reading - and it’s positively wince-making, every time you hear it.
The whole point of Audible should be to produce fluent and intelligent readings that are a pleasure to hear, and this has been the case with all the books I have listened to so far. But this mangling of the English language by an American reader, however well-meaning, was an absolutely miserable experience and an insult to one of our greatest writers.

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6 people found this helpful