A good opportunity missed

The previous reviewer pretty much sums it up- that the content is pretty much 5 star material is beyond dispute at least in my opinion
Some writers really need to be heard in their native tongue and this particularly applies to Poe- an English narrator of these works is not necessarily a turn off for me but God! at least show some empathy with the text! Poe’s work deals with extreme emotional states- how the otherwise Penguin Classics settled on this monotonous narrator is beyond me- big misstep on what could have been an excellent survey of Poe’s greatest hits

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Its hard to get past the narration

The book is obviously great. A wonderful collection of stories and poems, with a brilliant introduction. Its worth buying just for that introduction. But the narration is amateurish. Neither narrator seems to understand what they are reading. Catherine Bailey is definitely the stronger narrator. Her reading of the introduction is clear and refreshing. The poems are read in the way an undergraduate reads poetry, line by line, feeling their way through the text. Nonetheless the poems are quite tolerable. Tom Ravenscroft reads the tales by taking each word as it comes as if it was a surprise, and has no sense whatsoever of what he is reading or where he is going. For me, the stories are unlistenable, if you hope to derive some enjoyment from the listening. I could not understand why Penguin chose Ravenscroft as a narrator since he so completely lacks any empathy with the text. But I now learn he is a celebrity DJ, the son of John Peel, so this audiobook is a bit of a stunt. If I had known that I would not have bought this book.

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7 people found this helpful