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)

A classic finally comes to life.

What did you love best about Gone with the Wind?

The movie version has been on my wife's favorite movie list since high school. I've bought her collector editions of the novel as well. This is the first time I've picked up the book and had a listen. What a pleasant surprise. The narration is superb. Scarlet, Melanie, Ashley, Rett, they all come to life. It's a long book (longer than the movie!) but time flew by. Highly recommended for the period history and thought process of the time. May not be totally accurate because it's still fiction. I'm glad I listened to it.

Still wonderful

I read this book over 40 years ago as a teenager and have seen the movie several times. It was great to listen to it with my "older ears." Even though I knew everything that was going to happen before it did, and I haven't cried at a movie or book in decades, I cried at this one.

Some of the politics now have their roots in the politics of that time. One reviewer talked of the racism and sexism in the book. Those were the times, and the book wouldn't have been true to life without them. It's a shame that some people are still stuck in those times.

I've lived in the South all my life and hate fake Southern drawls. The narrator did not offend me. She did a great job.

Best audio book I ever "read"

My only complaint about this audio book is that it wasn't longer.

Don't even think twice about getting it.

It's my very favorite audio book, the second one being The Color Purple narrated by Alice Walker.

Excellent read!

I have seen the movie multiple times, and read the book years ago, but this audio version is great. It was like I was listening to it for the first time as there was so much I must have missed in the past. The narration is excellent, she even does some singing which enhances the story. It is a long book, but very enjoyable. It really gave me more of an appreciation for what life was like in the south during the Civil War.

The South's Palladium: The Southern Woman

I was as pleasantly surprised by this novel as any in recent memory. Some folks may find irony in educated Southerners' detestation of the Southern stigma: the prejudice of some outside the American South who scoff, sneer and laugh at Southerners as a bunch of backwards rednecks who romanticize the antebellum South and the rebel flag. Author Julia Reed, who's attuned to the Southern psyche, veriloquently speaks of "the deep-dyed fear that lives in the heart of every Southerner, myself included, that a Yankee is putting us down."

Over thirty years ago, after watching the film version of "Gone with the Wind," I retained very little and came away with a sick feeling deep down. The brilliant actor Robert Duvall hit the nail on the head:

Hollywood has always had a patronizing attitude toward the South. I couldn't sit through 'Gone with the Wind,' it was so bad. There should be a line of guys with shotguns at the Mason-Dixon line to tell actors, 'You can't come here unless you know what you're doing.'


Ever since, I've held the preconception that the novel is a nostalgic romance--near propaganda--which painted as "Eden" the Old South before the Civil War. I do NOT call this war the War Between the States, nor do I believe it was a war over states' rights or a "lost cause"; it was about the rights of all human beings to freedom from the inhumane evil of enslavement.

No doubt, too many Southerners continue to romanticize the antebellum South. Here's a prime example, from Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, a nightly show in Pigeon Force, Tennessee, which performance includes "Once Upon a Southern Time": "Once upon a Southern time / On this great plantation / Life was like a fairy tale / Filled with romance."

Offensive, I know. In my lifetime, I'm glad to say that I've seen significant strides made toward eradication of this pathetic Southern sentimentalization. I've ensured that my three children are instilled with the certainty that racism is both evil and intolerable and that, far from an Eden, the romanticized Old South was a den of iniquity.

All of this brings me to my commentary that Gone with the Wind is a thought-provoking novel full of colorful, dynamic characters, keenly delineated. This sweeping epic follows the high-spirited and tenacious and ruthless Scarlett O'Hara, who was also completely naive and ignorant in matters of the heart.

Groundbreaking in the South for 1939, the novel shows the complexities of many Southerners' feelings in the aftermath of the Civil War: much more than meets the eye underlies the negativities toward the Union and toward those who romanticized the pre-war South. Compare, for example,

"Now the chandelier hung dark. It was twisted askew and most of the prisms were broken, as if the Yankee occupants had made their beauty a target for their boots."

with

"Scarlett hated them, these smiling, light-footed strangers, these proud fools who took pride in something they had lost, seeming to be proud that they had lost it."


The novel is also feminist in showing the importance of strong females after the Civil War, particularly given the propensity of males to bear juvenile grudges and act irrationally in service thereof. O'Hara has come to be an icon for the Southern woman and the resilience of the human spirit in the South in overcoming seemingly insurmountable adversities. As W.J. Cash aptly observed in his 1941 The Mind of the South," the Southern woman "was the South's Palladium..., the standard for its rallying, the mystic symbol of its nationality in the face of the foe."

Learning my suspicions about the novel were unfounded was most satisfying and reminded me that perhaps "the past and present coexist here as nowhere on earth, side by side, as though one cannot live without the other." Eddy L. Harris.

Speed of narration - classic southern speed

Definitely spoken in true slow southern drawl but for those of us used to fast speed the 1.25 speed was great!

Such an amazing classic and great narration!!

"Oh, Scah-lett! Oh, Ash-leigh!"

A classic story about a beautiful and tough but highly thawed warrior diva, a handsome prince who is also a blackguard, a plain faced (of course) woman who is a so-called saint and a man who is a failed hero with lots and lots of history thrown in and a central message that is true today -- real estate is the only thing you can count on! That being said, the characters come to life in ways that make you cheer, make you cry and make you hate to see the end come at all -- no matter how it ends. Then there's the narration. While the narrator is a little weak on making the men actually sound like uh, men -- she has the drama and the pathos and the emotions and the accent down! In fact, one of the best narrations ever! All in all, if you like this kind of hard-hitting, not to say also politically incorrect for today's taste's stories, this is for you! Very, very satisfying. Highly recommended for it's drama and sheer can't put it down storytelling.

Superb!

Any additional comments?

We all know this movie well. As wonderful as the movie is, it can't and doesn't do justice to the book. I found myself skipping back just to listen to the same descriptions and dialog over again. I took my time with this one and loved every minute.

Wonderful rendition!

This was a great audible book. I hadn't read this book for years and it was a joy to listen to it. The reader was truely gifted, able to capture all the different personalities and sounds of their voices. This is an epic novel and an engaging story of America, the footprint of slavery and how deeply it impacted the many people involved. And of course Scarlett and Rhett are two of the great fictional characters of all time! A JOY to listen to!

Fabulous narrator

I had never read Gone With the Wind, only had seen the movie. Linda Stephens brought this book to life, and I listened to it for hours at a time. Each character's voice was done so well. What a talented narrator. I highly recommend this audiobook.