Liz

Story and writing are amazing, my only gripe is with the narrator. Her accent is anachronistic - people in the 1960s and 1970s (and up until the late 90s for that matter) didn't pronounce words like look, book, could as 'lerk' 'berk' and 'kerd'. For anyone over 30 this jars. It's a pity, as she does the regional accents well, so you wonder why she couldn't get this right as well.

This is the first Flashman book I've read or listened to, and I was entranced! Flashy is totally over the top, a name-dropping, boasting Casanova, yet beguiles you with his charm. Timothy West's narration would be impossible to improve upon - he completely captures Flashy's mixture of self-deprecation and supreme confidence. I'm so disappointed Audible has only three Flashman titles, I do hope you can prevail upon Timothy West to do them all!

Michael Rowbotham has been extravagantly praised, so I approached this novel with eagerness. However it seemed to unravel for me as it went along, especially after a strong beginning. I found the protagonist more and more irritating, and the motives of the killer not credible. The introduction of a second 'baddie' just before the end was a cop out. The performance, apart from a few idiosyncracies, was excellent.

Michael Jayston gives such a wonderful performance, you can't imagine anyone else reading Le Carré. He is George Smiley to perfection.

I absolutely agree with Larry (reviewer from San Antonio); Trollope couldn't find a better narrator than Timothy West.

Trollope constantly surprises us, he never takes the easy option - none of his characters is totally good or totally bad. For instance, one starts off wanting Mrs Hurtle to be a villain and Paul Montague a hero, but neither turns out to be either. Even Melmotte himself is not the devil incarnate.

My only problem is that I have read most of Trollope! However, if Timothy West is the narrator, I will listen again to books I have already read.

The problem alluded to by other reviews appears to've been corrected, as I heard the complete novel. The incomparable Timothy West illuminates Trollope's prose in such a way that makes the experience of listening to it far more rewarding than silent reading ever could.

Exploding the myth of the 'professional' Wehrmacht, standing aloof from Nazi politics, this book investigates why Germany followed Hitler into the abyss. As in Ian Kershaw's other books on WW2, his research is meticulous, and the narrative is logical and enlivened by extracts from contemporary diaries. It is a truly horrifying story. I liked Sean Pratt's narration though I found his pronunciation occasionally idiosyncratic.

I persisted with this book for about a third of its length as I thought it MUST surely improve and engage me, but it didn't. The reviewer who said that it's like being trapped in a corner with a first-year philosophy student hit the nail on the head. I just wanted to escape!

I'd never read Martin Amis before and chose this to remedy the gap in my reading. I really tried with this novel. I persisted for about 7 hours of it before giving up. None of the characters was remotely likeable, so I began to care less and less about them and what happened to them. The writing is irritating. For instance, "She was a woman. She knew so much more about tears than he did". This is followed by a long list of works of classical literature that she doesn't know "but she knew tears". There is also much irrelevant astro-physical information sprinkled at random through the novel. In summary, I found it pretentious. The narrator was good, but it must have been an uphill battle for him.

I won't add to comments about the novel (which is riveting!) but I would like to compliment the narrator Saul Reichlin. His narration is outstanding. His pronunciation of the names, the individualisation of the characters, the pacing of the narrative, are all brilliantly realised. The tone of his voice is warm and pleasing to listen to.