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![[Audiobook]](/documents/reading_list/figures/audiobook.png)
Dickens, Charles.
A Tale of Two Cities.
(Audiobook, Unabridged).
Hong Kong: Naxos Audiobooks, [1859] 2005.
ISBN 962-634-359-1.
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Like many people whose high school years predated the abolition of
western civilisation from the curriculum, I was compelled to read an
abridgement of this work for English class, and only revisited it in
this audiobook edition let's say…some years afterward.
My rather dim memories of the first read was that it was one of the
better novels I was forced to read, but my memory of it was tarnished
by my life-long aversion to compulsion of every kind. What I only
realise now, after fourteen hours and forty-five minutes of listening
to this superb unabridged audio edition, is
how much injury is done to the masterful prose of Dickens
by abridgement. Dickens frequently uses repetition as a
literary device, acting like a basso
continuo to set a tone of the inexorable playing out
of fate. That very repetition is the first thing to go
in abridgement, along with lengthy mood-setting descriptive
passages, and they are sorely missed. Having now listened to
every word Dickens wrote, I don't begrudge a moment I spent
doing so—it's worth it.
The novel is narrated or, one might say, performed by
British actor
Anton Lesser,
who adopts different dialects and voice pitches for
each character's dialogue. It's a little odd at first
to hear French paysans
speaking in the accents of rustic Britons, but you
quickly get accustomed to it and recognise who's speaking
from the voice.
The audible.com
download edition is sold in two separate “volumes”:
volume 1 (7 hours 17 minutes) and
volume 2 (7 hours 28 minutes), each
about a 100 megabyte download at MP3 quality.
An Audio CD edition (12 discs!) is
available.
September 2007 