Brideshead Revisited: Booktrack Edition

By: Evelyn Waugh

Narrated by: Jeremy Irons

Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

Brideshead Revisited: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience!

The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece - an audiobook that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire.

Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities. At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh's early satiric explorations and reveals him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity.

Booktrack is an immersive format that pairs traditional audiobook narration to complementary music. The tempo and rhythm of the score are in perfect harmony with the action and characters throughout the audiobook. Gently playing in the background, the music never overpowers or distracts from the narration, so listeners can enjoy every minute. When you purchase this Booktrack edition, you receive the exact narration as the traditional audiobook available, with the addition of music throughout.

©2012 Evelyn Waugh (P)2020 Little, Brown & Company

Annoying music damages a great novel

This is a terrific novel that is beautifully read by Jeremy Irons, who played the narrator and main character in the Masterpiece Theater series. But why the producers added distracting and unnecessary music I have no idea. If I had known this great work was marred by second rate abstract tinkling piano sound and worse I wouldn’t have bought it.

Why the awful music?

I love this book dearly. I love Jeremy Irons' voice bringing it to life. What I cannot abide is somebody choosing to add sentimental, low quality piano music in the background of the narration. The music is cut-rate and doesn't even correspond with the text! The result is an emotionally jarring experience the likes of which I'm not eager to have again. Had I known this edition included this awful background music I certainly would not have purchased it.

don't add music to audiobooks

and in case you do decide to add music at least sync it with the narration

The music is infuriating

The music is intrusive and out of sync with the narration. Truly awful. Icky

The added music ruins the experience

The added music is extremely distracting and doesn’t correspond at all to what is being read. Why would anyone think this is a good idea?

Lovely book. Distracting sound effects. Oppressive music.

I loved the text and enjoyed the narrator but hated the music and sound effects. I never would have purchased this edition if I had known.

except for one thing

did not enjoy the volume of the musical score in the background in several chapters. it was too loud, and made it hard to hear the reader. it was quite irritating.

Music is annoying

Agree with others that the music and weird clinking silverware sound effects are annoying. I tolerated it because of Jeremy irons and there were no other versions.

A love letter to a dead age.

Through Waugh’s genius prose becomes poetry. Irons is the perfect narrator. I was thoroughly enchanted.

Superb, Thought-provoking Masterpiece

Waugh was a consummate craftsman, and the combination of his gorgeous prose and Jeremy Irons’ performance gave it an elegiac majesty that absorbed me completely. By chance I came to the end of the book at the middle of Holy Week and I could not have asked for a better pairing. Like many others I could have done without the musical background, which I found distracting.