The Dream Woman

By: Wilkie Collins

Narrated by: B.J. Harrison

Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

“Wake up! Wake up, there! Murder!” A hostler spits out these vehement words while he turbulently sleeps. He is haunted by a phantasm. It is a phantasm with a droop in the left eye, long flaxen hair, and a long buckhorn clasp knife.

Public Domain (P)2009 B.J. Harrison

Great story-poor recording

I love Wilkie Collins stories and this is right up there with the best. The narration is very good and keeps you entertained. However the recoding quality is very poor, sections repeat themselves for no apparent reason and makes the story hard to follow. Maybe another version??

a rip off

This program is 2 hour repeated twice. Typical of audible's carelessness. They know how to charge a lot but they don't seem to have any money for editors.

Narrator ruined the story for me

I truly enjoy the work of Wilkie Collins but to be quite honest, the story was ruined by the narrator. There’s usually a lot of substance to his stories and typically you have to pay close attention in order to piece it all together. And although this narrator has a pleasant voice, it’s not particularly suited to this type of narrative. It kind of just lulled me into a state of boredom and my mind wandered. I tried to restart the book several times but it continued to happen. As I already know I enjoy the author and his writing style, I’m afraid it can only be the narrator’s voice that wasn’t right for me. I’ going to see if there is another recording of the same book but with a different narrator. I think I’ll enjoy it much more then.

This Audio Book is only half as long as it seems

I love Wilkie Collins and the narrator was superlative, my only complaint is I thought the book was twice as long as it actually was because the story is recorded twice! Here I thought I had 2+ hours left to go, when suddenly it all ended and began again!

doubled?

the story repeats itself, if you listen to this book in its entirety you will hear the story twice. you may wish to fix that

And there's no way around it…

This particular recording appears to have problems; the whole book appears to repeat itself. Maybe someone should look into it.

(As posted in Goodreads)
I do so like Wilkie Collins! The story is spelled out so well, and the characters and justifications are introduced and presented ably and completely. The story had the feel of both a horror story and a mystery, but neither of those truly characterize it. The reader is left both loving and pitying Francis and that same time mistrusting dreams and inner feelings of doubt and general unease...
Now I need to go back and reread _The Moonstone_.

broken

What would have made The Dream Woman better?

So disappointing! I was thrilled to see a Wilkie Collins story I had never read before, and the narrator captured the perfect tone for Collins, but it becomes unlistenable as the file is corrupted. Apparently this was compiled from a serialized podcast, and the sections not only play out of order, but are jumbled on top of each other, randomly inserting snippets of the introduction.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

the story & narration are wonderful but the file is broken

Any additional comments?

I hope someone can fix the file of this delightful story.

Horrible audio quality

I've listened to several books narrated by B.J. Harrison, and I can't say I'm overwhelmed. Though the performance was rather well-done, the quality of the recording was abominable. The sections of the audio overlapped and repeated over and over again. It's even hard to say that I managed to listen to the whole story!
So downhearted. :( Beware.