Susan C. S.

This book got good and bad reviews. Believe the bad ones.

I rarely give up on an audiobook once I've paid for it, but with this one I'd rather listen to nothing. Pure unrelieved inanity. Sorry to say this, because I loved The Fortress of Solitude.

Every laudatory word in the reviews is deserved by this wonderful book. I'm not going to even try to describe or explain. Read it.

I listened to this book twice, then bought the hard copy. I'm so glad to see that many other listeners reacted to it the same way I did. After a long lifetime of reading, it's not that often a "new" book enters my consciousness permanently the way this book has done. It seems timeless, yet absolutely focused on life as it is in our time. The readers are superb.

Takes a while to get into this book. One fears at first this may become a sentimental or overly nostalgic view of a lost way of life. After a while you realize you're in good hands with this author. I highly recommend the book, in audio or print.

Roy Dotrice, the reader, performs a great service to the book, I think. I certainly don't know the subtleties of accent and intonation he's dealing with here. But he has made decisions about how he will read it and carries it out over a long span with perfect integrity. His reading turns the entire book into poetry, or even music. Here again you may feel at first that the voice will wear on you, but his skill is such that it carries the story along without fail.

A perfect match of reader and text.

There are only a very few books I've listened to twice in immediate succession. After I finished it the second time, I had to wait a couple of days before I could read any other book, in either print or sound This is not only one of the best audiobooks I've experienced; it's one of the best books I've ever read. I'll be buying a print copy to pass around my family.

I've always liked Richard Ford (especially The Lay of the Land), and this book was something of a surprise. You can see the connections with his other work, but this seems to have sprung all at once (a very focused and intense book) from some rather different place. I wish Ford a long and productive life! And I thank him for this book.

Also, an excellent reader.

I found this book fascinating and compelling throughout. Don't be put off by the fact that every review seems to mention The Matrix and Inception. I'm an old school reader (read elderly) who has no wish to see either of those movies a second time. This is very good writing on timeless human mysteries. I wish this author long life and many more books.

I'm surprised to find myself giving the reader five stars, because there were some jarring almost dyslexic misreadings of particular words and syntax, but in the end it seemed the perfect voice for the book.

One of the best books I have ever read. I bought a hard copy so my husband could read it. A book I want in my permanent library.

Fascinating book and a pitch-perfect reading. I listened twice. Robert Petkoff's reading has both a flow and a level of detail that makes the book comprehensible and intriguing. I bought the hard copy and looking at it, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have made it through. This is a gem.

I had to stop about two and a half hours in. It was shaping up to be an interesting book, but the reader is so unpleasant that it became unbearable.

I understand that this reader is trying to convey the plain non-nonsense hard bitten atmosphere of these characters, but she goes to such lengths as to make her voice grating and nagging throughout the narrative. I kept trying to turn it down to escape the effect. She seems to try to pronounce each syllable separately, making the characters appear to be almost simple-minded, even though we know that they are not.

This reader is trying way too hard. She should let the written words carry the story.

I can't understand why the narrator chose to portray the main character in the voice of an extremely elderly man with a stereotypical Boston Brahmin accent. The man is actually 71 years old and specifically mentions that he grew up in a bookish household in Montclair New Jersey. This choice skews the entire narrative and makes the central character almost comically flat. He's not a character, but a caricature, one invented not by the author, but by the Narrator. Too bad.