The Picture of Dorian Grey

This is my first time listening to an audio book. I really enjoyed the narrators voice. I love the victorian era. I thought the narrator's voice was perfectly suited to the era. I got drawn into the world of the privelidged and the snobbery. It was a great listen and throughly absorbing and enjoyable.

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2 people found this helpful

Thoroughly enjoyed this

The recording is from 1965, so expect the quality to be of the time.

Far from leaving awkward gaps in the prose, the narrator leaves plenty of room for the story to unfold and embed. What’s the rush?

And his performance of Lord Henry as sadistic groomer is pitch perfect proto-Palpatine.

That said, while there’s a Stephen Fry version out there, this was always going to be an overshadowed, but cheaper option.

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Bad narration

This version is not a good listen. The narrator is awful. His 'different' voices for characters are largely identical and he differentiates the character be being either downbeat or upbeat - which for me removes any emotion from what the characters are actually meant to be saying. I also found that his voices for some of the bit-parts were so ludicrous that I had to turn the volume down to avoid the distortion in both the car and on headphones! Oh and he far too often sounds like a bad Kenneth Williams impression to really make for a pleasant listen.

As for the book... well it's a slow-burner. Expect all the snobbish quips of Oscar Wilde along the way.

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3 people found this helpful

spoiled by an out of date narrator

I just couldn't get on with this book. I have been enjoying my audiobooks hugely - they have opened up a new world of being able to 'read' anywhere - even at the supermarket - but this book brought my listening pleasure to a juddering halt. The narrator's style is incredibly out of date, from his affected BBC English to his stilted and disjointed sentences. I think he is trying to get across a feeling of superiority but he just sounds bored, often pausing for so long in mid-sentence that I found myself urging him to finish the phrase, or simply switching off with boredom myself. There is little or no distinction in his voice between characters and everything is delivered in a virtual monotone. It was like sitting through an overlong and badly acted one-man play. This book may be cheap, but it's really not worth the money.

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1 person found this helpful

Narrator is not good enough

I have given up listening to this purely because I think the narrator is bad. Sentences are disjointed, there are unnecessarily long pauses - it just does not flow. I don't want to ruin the experience of listening to this classic work through bad narration.

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3 people found this helpful

Chapters are incorrect.

Whilst reading a book I like to have an audio book. However, it was incredibly hard to track where I was in the audio book as all the chapters are mixed up. I ended up using youTube.

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