The Great Gatsby

By: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Narrated by: Deaver Brown

Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

Some consider The Great Gatsby the greatest American novel ever written about love, dreams, business, bootlegging, Wall Street, the Midwest, and the East, as well as Yale, prep schools, the rich, and more. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald followed up with Tender Is the Night, also considered equally compelling.

Public Domain (P)2020 Deaver Brown

Reading and recording are subpar

Given most of the novels are written not keeping 'audio book' in mind but for real book-reading, the reader of audio book needs to be creative about how to deliver the same value of real book-reading with an assumption that the listener listening a novel for first time. That means providing pauses in places so that listener can "catch" the context, or raising voice in certain texts to convey its importance.
Unfortunately, this audio book was read too fast (4:30 instead of typical 5 plus hours) without proper pauses, and the whole reading is more or less flat. It might be a good reading for listener who already read the book, but not for first time listener of this novel.
In addition, the piano is background is more of a distraction than providing good listening experience.

terribly read

this reader managed to mangle a extraordinary book. miss pronunciations, long pauses for no reason, and turning sentences into confusing run on sentences.

Really poor narration

One would have thought that the producers would have used a better narrator for this classic. He is unable to pronounce many words and sounds them out on occasion. For instance, he doesn’t pronounce Monaco correctly. He pauses mid sentence and doesn’t follow punctuation. This makes it very difficult to follow along. The background piano music is also very distracting. I’m glad it only cost $1!

Overpowering music

Love the book and narrator is great. However, the “background@ music is overpowering and most of the time is louder than the narrator making impossible to follow the story. Terrible execution of combining music and narrative in this particular version. I recommend getting a different audiobook version of this book that is actually possible to listen to.

Incomplete

This book has 9 chapters, the audiobook has two chapter per each chapter from the book. Doesn't have the first half chapter of chapters 4 and 7.

Unbearable to listen too

I enjoyed the book but listening to the narrator was unbearable do you do give anybody a job

I should get a refund it said this purchased most

horrible performance, hard to understand, story lost in the misery of a poor performance. I was lying in bed when I bought this and did it by voice not recommended!

Terrible

Terrible narration and the constant music in the background is too distracting. This was hard to listen to.

Worst audio book performance I have ever heard!

Worst audio book performance I have ever heard! I had to stop it and acquire another version. The reader didn't even know some of the words and didn't seem to care. They would pronounce words as closely as they could and move on. At many points the reader would hesitate as if they were reading this book for the first time.

the narrator is hard to listen to

the narrator's voice is quite unique and generally compelling. however, he stutters on various words often accenting the wrong syllable and there are frequent pauses as if he is trying to find his place in the written materials. ultimately this became too distracting for me and I'm returning the book