New Reviews: Classics

With his fancy-free tone and a charming Irish lilt, Liam Gerrard has a great time reading this entertaining collection of classic Irish folktales, tall tales, and poems. All are centered on the larger-than-life exploits of the ancient clan leader, seer, and poet Finn MacCool. Finn is credited with building the Giant's Causeway, marauding with Druids, and eating the Salmon of... Read More

This immersive adaptation of Montgomery's classic features a Canadian ensemble with Sandra Oh as the narrator, and Catherine O'Hara, Victor Garber, and Michela Luci playing the main characters. When 11-year-old Anne mistakenly arrives in Avonlea, she brings her vivid imagination and bright personality to Marilla and Matthew's quiet farm. As she portrays Anne, Luci's infectious... Read More

Nicholas Boulton brings this bleakly energetic 1896 novel to life with intelligence. Set in the worst of the London slums, it focuses on the ill-starred Perrott family, especially the boy Dicky, but includes many other neighborhood characters. Boulton moves easily among all of them, fluently altering voices, accents, ages, and genders as if he's a one-man full cast. His deep,... Read More

Big Brother, Thought Police, doublethink, omnipresent surveillance. Portraying rebellious romantics Winston Smith and Julia in this classic dystopian novel, narrators Andrew Garfield and Cynthia Erivo lead a crew of inspired English actors in creating a full-cast, filmlike 21st-century reimagining of one of the twentieth century's most important novels. The production is... Read More

Georgina Sutton delivers a crisp, precise performance of this audiobook, which follows the Vernon family through three volumes of Victorian history and manners. With a lovely voice and crystal-clear accent, Sutton maneuvers through a ponderous plot with as much life as one could offer. Her pace is brisk, and her enunciation is razor-sharp. Indeed, Sutton's skill drives the... Read More

There is something soothing about returning to the lost art of letter writing with this audiobook. Add to this the elegant style of the legendary Jane Austen and the equally elegant performance of Kate Reading, and the result is fine, indeed. Reading's voice is calm, measured, and appropriately slow paced. Even though we are hearing details about lives we largely know little... Read More

Jack de Golia narrates the introductory novel in the Lone Wolf series. First published in 1914, the series features the Lone Wolf, Michael Lanyard. De Golia performs with appropriate objectivity, engaging listeners despite the dated language. Revelations of Lanyard's disturbing early history add credibility to his development into a jewel thief. When a group of underworld types... Read More

Rupert Degas delivers what sounds like a full-cast performance--with every accent, every dialect, every nuance in place. This grim novel is based on writer Albert Maltz's imprisonment after he insulted the red-baiting House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. The 1950s book was originally suppressed for its political message, a plea for prison reform. Degas is completely... Read More

Peter Wickham slips easily into the voice of the eighteenth-century English parson and naturalist Gilbert White as he delivers White's pioneering study of the seasonal patterns of plants and animals. Vigorous and precise, Wickham's performance captures not only the antique grace of White's prose, but also his understanding of the importance of the details he was recording.... Read More

Juliet Stevenson brings her usual alacrity to this challenging audiobook. Woolf's unconventional novel is in expert hands with Stevenson, whose rich voice and lilting accent keep the listener on track through the many shifts and changes in the plot. Called a "biography" by Woolf herself, the story follows protagonist Orlando through centuries of change, including Orlando's... Read More

Narrator Rupert Degas tackles this offbeat "experiment in biography" with conspicuous gusto and the enthusiasm of a man given an assignment he feels born to perform. In 1925, British author Symons was introduced to a previously unknown novel, Frederick Rolfe's HADRIAN THE SEVENTH. This eccentric work led Symons to pursue its even more eccentric author, who styled himself as... Read More

The January of this audiobook's title is no ordinary month. In this wintry time, we meet six courageous escapees from Nazi death marches who are thrust together in a battle for survival. Rupert Degas is a master of accents and emotions as he delivers conversations featuring Russian, French, German, and Polish characters whose mindsets swing between relieved exultation and... Read More

This is the latest of the classic works by Joseph Conrad ably narrated by David Horovitch. This 1915 work, relatively unknown, concerns a drifter named Axel Heyst who runs a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago and his relationship with an English girl. He saves her from her employer, and then she saves Heyst from himself. There is quite a bit of... Read More

Linda Jones narrates this classic memoir with compassion and authenticity. Some of its quirky observations haven't worn well with the passage of time and may turn off some contemporary listeners. But Jones adds emphasis and a playful tone to Thoreau's list of budget items and explanation that he is a squatter on his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson's farm. First published in 1854,... Read More