Gone with the Wind

De: Margaret Mitchell

Narrado por: Linda Stephens

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Margaret Mitchell's great novel of the South is one of the most popular books ever written. Within six months of its publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind had sold a million copies. To date, it has been translated into 25 languages, and more than 28 million copies have been sold.

Here are the characters that have become symbols of passion and desire: darkly handsome Rhett Butler and flirtatious Scarlett O'Hara. Behind them stand their gentler counterparts: Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton. As the lives and affairs of these absorbing characters play out against the tumult of the Civil War, Gone With the Wind reaches dramatic heights that have swept generations of fans off their feet.

Having lived in Atlanta for many years, narrator Linda Stephens has an authentic ear for the dialects of that region. Get ready to hear Gone With the Wind exactly as it was written: every word beautifully captured in a spectacular unabridged audio production.

©1964 Stephens Mitchell (P)2001 Recorded Books, LLC

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Beyond a doubt one of the most remarkable first novels produced by an American writer. It is also one of the best." ( The New York Times)
"The best novel to have ever come out of the South...it is unsurpassed in the whole of American writing." ( The Washington Post)

Got the Accents Right

Okay, I'm not going to review the text of GWTW. It's been analyzed plenty. It's a brilliant book. 'Nuff said.

What I do want to review is the audio performance. When I saw that GWTW was available in audio format, I was dubious. I'm from the South. (Not the deep South -- Virginia). I speak with a Tidewater accent, which is different to my ear from a Georgia accent, which is different to my ear from a Charleston accent... You get the picture.

Ms. Stephens managed to get the nuances of the various accents well enough not to make me cringe. It sounds like a trivial thing, but since Mitchell, herself, made a big deal of differences of dialect in the actual novel, you need to have it in the performance. I'm so glad that the narrator did not go for that Eastern Tennessee accent that is so often touted as "Generic Southern".

If you love GWTW, get it. If you've never read it, this is a good way to enjoy the book.

The real Gone with the Wind

The book is so much richer than the film could ever be. It's really a character study into the nature of the people who lived through the civil war and those who didn't. It is written through the eyes of Scarlett, who is a survivor regardless of the cost, and the people who clung to her for their own survival.
Unfortunately, this novel is politically incorrect. If I were black, I would be very angry when reading it. Considering the publication date, it should be noted that during that time, (1936) racism existed throughout the U.S. and this book, unfortunately, reflects those belief. Regardless, it remains one of the very best glimpses into the civil war south.

Yes, I know

As far as I'm concerned, this is probably my favorite book of all time. I understand that there are folks out there who think the book is shameful and terrible, and I honestly don't understand why.

If you read it thinking that it's supposed to be a historically accurate portrayal of the south before, during, and after the Civil War, then yes, it looks like the book trivializes slavery, paints all men as idiots and all women as shrews.

If, however, you look at it as a work of fiction, it seems clear to me that it wasn't meant to describe life as it truly was, but to show what it might have looked like through the eyes of a young white girl.

With one exception, the characters are a bunch of selfish, difficult, judgmental jerks, and the protagonist (Scarlett) is the worst of the lot.

They're also a bunch of survivors, doing what they think is right, or what they think they can get away with, in order to see themselves and their families through difficult times.

This is the best credit I've ever spent, and I highly recommend this book to anyone who can separate fact from fiction, and appreciates the latter even when the subject matter is ugly.

great novel

The narrator was excellent. This novel gives the emotional side of the ramp up to the Civil War, the war itself, and subsequent reconstruction. Highly recommended.

A Classic Worth Keeping

I did not set out to listen to this once again. I just wanted to check a passage at the very beginning of the book, and so I decided to listen to that point. Probably about 150 pages in. I got sucked in to this story ONCE AGAIN.

My eyes and ears were much more attuned to the story outside of Scarlet and Rhett this time, which I have to confess is what must have been the only thing I paid attention to in times past. The sugar coated, slavery is a good institution pre war attitude almost made me put the book down. Then the post war, hateful, name calling, one sided -- south was right north was wrong -- attitude was excruciating, but by then I was too vested, and before long it got bearable again. I do remember hating the second part of the book when I was younger, and this must have been why. It's a far cry from even the new Harper Lee book and is just shocking.

However, if it is being told from that generation, I do think it is what the plantation owner class, esp. women, did. How else could you live with it, without sugar coating it -- no, no slave was ever beaten or mistreated in the whole county, etc. etc., our way was better, they are going to kill us all, the Clan is required, etc. etc. I guess I worry that this book will be torn down from the libraries, and I hope it won't be. We need books like this to show us where we truly were so that we can never ever go there again, and so that we can see the sins of the past do truly still cause on a people.

Books don't tend to be written one sided any more, if anything they are politically correct and show both sides so you can see that the truth is somewhere out there and dependent upon your vantage point. But if we are too politically correct, especially in historical fiction, then we are not being honest. How do we tell these stories? How do we keep these old stories from being ripped away, just because they make us hate what we are hearing and experiencing when we read them? I don't know.

As to the whole Scarlet (and Rhett, etc. etc.) thing, I think my view on her (and him, them, etc.) has not changed, but has definitely deepened. I'm perhaps more amazed that her POV was written when it was. We tend to think that that feminist revolution made women, but the fact is that it didn't, it just made a lot of women realize that there were others out there. (That is not to deny that legal changes didn't make sweeping changes for women's lives, both good and bad, but that isn't what I am talking about).

What an interesting story. Now, I confess, I'm scared to read the new Mammy version. What an indictment that must be. But I want to. Maybe I shall.