Freddy and Fredericka

By: Mark Helprin

Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie

Length: 25 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

Best-selling, critically acclaimed author Mark Helprin's work has drawn favorable comparisons to an elite group of literary legends, including James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, and Thomas Mann. Helprin's sheer comic brilliance shines in this ingenious farce.

Freddy is the bright but aloof Prince of Wales. Fredericka is his blonde, beautiful, and beloved wife. When they stumble into a public relations nightmare with no easy solution, they must make amends by serving an unusual penance. Literally dropped from a plane into a mysterious place called Hoboken, New Jersey, Freddy and Fredericka are given one task. They must reconquer America!

A thinly veiled satire of what might have happened if Princess Diana had survived, Freddy and Fredericka is an imaginative gem full of clever wordplay and wicked political jabs.

©2005 Mark Helprin (P)2005 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"Helprin's entertaining new novel [is] a rollicking picaresque saga that reads as though Evelyn Waugh had put the movies Roman Holiday and Duck Soup into a blender along with some old copies of People magazine and a couple of Mark Twain's travelogues, and seasoned the resulting confection with generous helpings of his own black comedy....Mr. Helprin has constructed a perfect showcase for his heretofore underused gift of humor, and in doing so he has produced a delightful romp of a book." (The New York Times)
"Irresistibly mischievous." (Booklist)
"Wildly imaginative, adventure-filled, clever." (Publishers Weekly)
"[Mark Helprin] frequently astounds with the freshness of voice and the oddly soaring majesty of this...comic call for greatness in a mediocre era." (Kirkus Reviews)

Worth every minute!

This was a great book and I highly recommend reading it. I found myself laughing out loud many times through the book. By the time the book ended - I missed my friends, Freddy and Fredericka. Mixed in with all the humor were great lessons in endurance and ingenuity.

Funny!

Would you listen to Freddy and Fredericka again? Why?

Yes, I think it was really funny! I enjoyed the story and the adventurers within the story. The characters were well developed.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Freddy, because he never realized when people didn't understand him, and all the small confusions that could have been avoided.

Which scene was your favorite?

The Hussein "Who is sane" part!

If you could rename Freddy and Fredericka, what would you call it?

Will He be King

Any additional comments?

It was funny and I would recommend it!

Fantastic book!

I loved this book! Luckily my in-laws were in town when I was listening to this so someone was watching the kids while I took every spare moment supposedly to do yard-work but the real reason was to get back to this book. I was a little scared at the beginning since it started fairly slowly but after the first maybe 30 minutes it was non-stop great. I loved this narrator, I think I would have been distracted by a switch to believable regional American accents. The book was, at times, laugh-out-loud hilarious and at other points very moving and deep. I highly recommend it.

Wonderful if not wordy

Much to my surprise this book snuck up on me as one of the most meaningful, poignant reads of the year. This is not to say I never struggled to press on through some dense, slapstick, encyclopedic passages; I did. Modern writing has not prepared me for a lot of the timeless tomes which require real effort. I’ll just say this: it was so very worth it. While the excessive style of writing may not be popular, the fact that I had to work to stay engaged was part of what made the end so very meaningful and enjoyable. I ended up buying the book so I could have certain passages in print with me always. The end is some of the most soulful, true writing I’ve had the privilege of reading in a long time, and it made me proud to be an American with British ancestry.

Bitter disappointment

This book started off very promisingly with a humourous, witty scene with evocative prose and descriptions. Which is why it was so disappointing when it proceeded to meander along with clumsy plot development and silly jokes that just went on too long. The characters were mostly frustratingly stupid and the word puns were heavy handed. I perserved through three quarters of it because I liked the author's beautiful descriptions but in the end the silliness of the plot and characters outweighed even that and I gave up. It as annoying that the narrator couldn't speak in an American accent since that made the whole story even more difficult to buy into. However I am sure it would have been worse if he had attempted to speak with an accent.
This would have to be one of the most frustrating books I have ever listened to and I would not try anything else by this author.

Occasionally Funny. Ultimately Tedious.

This book seemed to have a lot going for it - good author, fresh plot, interesting characters - unfortunately Mark Helprin fell in love with comedy based on inane misunderstandings between characters and dialog repetition. It seemed as though a quarter of the book was comprised of nothing more than Freddy making a comment and Fredericka repeating it back to him - or vice versa. Add to that a weak ending and what's left is just not enough to make this novel worth while.

Nyeh

I love Mark Helprin. I did not like this book. I certainly thought parts of it were good, and funny, but as a whole -- nyeh. I did listen to the whole thing, assuming I would be glad I did in the end. But seriously, the minute it was done, I was GLAD it was done, not glad I had stuck it out!

couldn't finish

This book moved from one tale to the next, each one with poor content and tediously verbose. The narrator was quite annoying. After having read Helprin's PARIS IN THE PRESENT TENSE, which I loved and have recommended to my friends, I looked forward to more of Helprin's work, but after this I don't think I will be motivated to read another one of his.

Clever word play? Come on...!

The clever word play that is said to be the books many wonderful qualities was the most annoying thing in the book. Clever? Please! It was like listening to a much to long, badly done "who's on first" monologue over and over and over again. There were so many that it became pathetic. I don't know what the writer was thinking!

The story was cute and entertaining at times but there were just too many stupid cornball situations the main characters get into, like a bad sitcom. It became unfunny very quickly. I finished listening, and that is saying something...but it was a challenge.

Don't waste your time - just read this review

This book was tedious, to say the least. I picked this book up just out of curiosity and was sorely disappointed. First of all, as another reviewer mentioned, the reader was awful. For some reason he can butcher together a Jamaican accent but can't give an American accent to the numerous American characters in the book. Moreover, the author was incapable of even making the characters "sound" American by writing lines that Americans just wouldn't say. The book is said to include "clever word play." I would describe it more like one really long episode of "Three's Company" - where I, the reader, have to sit by and listen to a moronic character misunderstand another idiotic character and have it go on for 10 minutes at a time. What's the point in that? This book is just filled with idiocy, from the random characters that don't add to the plot to the rantings of a lunatic prince. And to top it all off, after laboring through this book to the end (just so that I had a basis for writing this review) the book took a different tone altogether - as though the previous 8 hours of text were from a different writer. I've never disliked a book so much. I got so frustrated listening to this book, which is not a good thing since I listen in my car commuting to work. Getting through a book should not be this much work.