The Blithedale Romance

De: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Narrado por: Ellis Freeman

The Blithedale Romance (1852) by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a dark romantic novel set in the farming commune of Blithedale where some utopian city slickers have gathered in order to improve the world. The narrator, Miles Coverdale, gets acquainted with the reformer Hollingsworth, the feminist Zenobia, her sister Priscilla, her father Old Moodie, and Professor Westervelt. They pursue their individual egotistical paths and get entangled in their conflicting ambitions. As he gets to know them, Coverdale becomes disillusioned by their hypocrisy. Instead of changing the world, the characters’ private passions ultimately lead to tragedy. It is widely believed that the novel contains a layer of autobiography and that certain of the characters were based on real people.

Public Domain (P)2019 Museum Audiobooks

Good voice/many mispronunciations

I really liked the tone of the reader’s voice but the mispronunciations were just embarrassing. Someone should review the proper pronunciations of the words before the reader embarks. A great performance but clearly not from a scholar or intellectual.

Not great story, worse performance

The story was alright at first but I really wanted it to be a critique/satire of the narrator and his annoying friends. It started to feel that way at times and then collapsed into boring melodrama, then I gave up. I probably could have made it through the story still but the voice performance was pretty bad (and I thought that this actor's was the best out of the three versions I could find on Audible). He would do this inflection with his voice to, I don't know, add drama or something, and then resolve on this cheery note. Doesn't sound too bad but he does it constantly. Every. Single. Sentence.