Minerva

The Six Sisters, Book 1

By: M. C. Beaton

Narrated by: Charlotte Anne Dore

Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's Summary

Minerva marks the delightful debut of The Six Sisters, a family saga in six volumes that will recount the romantic adventures of the six marriageable daughters of a country vicar, the Reverend Charles Armitage, in Regency England. The eldest, Minerva, is enchantingly beautiful - but a prude. She lives in the country looking after her siblings while her mother reclines on a chaise longue happily inventing new malaises. Her father, a vicar of decidedly secular inclinations, indulges a hearty passion for hunting instead of worrying about the girls' dowries. But when he wants to send his boys to Eton, the money must be found - and how better than by marrying Minerva off to a man of fortune?

Dispatched to Town, Minerva experiences her first season under the wing of an elderly relative. But age, it seems, is no guarantee of respectability, and Lady Godolphin's plan for a good time scandalize her young charge. Finally Minerva's moralizing ways make her the subject of a shocking wager among the rakes and dandies of Regency London.

Meanwhile, the handsome Lord Sylvester Comfrey is observing her progress in the marriage market. For such a virtuous girl, Minerva unaccountably finds herself in some extremely compromising situations with this gentleman, who alas professes not to be the marrying kind.

©1994 Marion Chesney (P)2012 AudioGO

Satire unrecognized by narrator

What disappointed you about Minerva?

The narrator. I didn't expect much more than a relatively clever regency tale - MC is pretty good at them - but this narrator is just wrong. Apart from the fact that she sounds unwell - laryngitis and breathing constantly in the middle of phrases - she apparently doesn't understand many of the three- and four-syllable words, mispronouncing them as well as missing the point of any given sentence. She sounds like a young person with no familiarity with the genre, and occasionally I wondered if she was from Australia or Manchester or the Bronx. There is no attitude of satire or enjoyment from her, it's just words followed by more words.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

The story's fine, slight, but I expected nothing else.

How could the performance have been better?

A different, older more sophisticated narrator.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The story was fun, and I'd sort of like to know what happens next, but frankly I couldn't put myself through listening to this narrator again.

Any additional comments?

Seriously, is there a director or producer involved in the recording? I really can't understand how a narration of this caliber came to be regarded as worthy of sale. I wonder if Ms. Chesney has heard it.

If you like Emma, you'll like this one

I do really like a good comedy of Victorian Manners story and I loved this one. I'm looking forward to reading the whole series. M.C. Beaton put a good effort into this one!
I liked the narrator too, especially when she was doing the men's voices.
And I love finding a new narrator that I like!

Narrator not up to the job

I couldn’t finish the book, so I can’t really rate the story. I hate leaving bad reviews, especially for narrators, as it seems so personal, but this woman is either unacquainted with natural speech rhythms or hasn’t prepared for the narration. Listening was torture.

Oh, so very romantic!

Any additional comments?

This is one of my favorite Regency romances by M.C. Beaton. I was a bit impatient with Minerva in the beginning, but the author does need to create and for a while maintain a tension between the would-be lovers. I especially liked Minerva's father, the good vicar and also his pal the squire. Old matchmakers to be sure! Lord Sylvester was all that was good and generous: a truly romantic hero. There are some funny scenes, too.Highly recommended.

An M. C. Beaton book to miss.

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I always enjoy M. C. Beaton books but listening to this one was torture. The reader was inexperienced and halting. Her horsey voice did not resonate with the gentle, sweet timber of the main character, Minerva. Perhaps if it was redone by a softer, sweeter voice the book would read better. Now, it is just off-putting.

Has Minerva turned you off from other books in this genre?

The book in itself is fine for what it is. The reader was awful.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Charlotte Anne Dore?

Emilia Fox would have been a wonderful narrator.

What character would you cut from Minerva?

None, really.

Any additional comments?

Read the book instead of listening to it. The narrator was so bad that I just wanted the book to end.

Unlistenable

I have enjoyed other Beaton books and audios but this narrator led me to abandon the effort.

For those who haven't read Georgette Heyer

This is a typical regency romance. A good way to wile away a rainy day, or a workout on the treadmill.

Charmless story. No Likeable Characters

I would normally thoroughly delight in the charms of a Marion Chesney/MC Beaton Regency story, but I was unable to finish this one.

Minerva was a smug prude, her father selfish, her mother a hypochondriac - her siblings were self absorbed, shallow etc.

Not as fun as her other series.

Rengency tale not up to scratch.

Is there anything you would change about this book?

As for the book itself, if you are looking for Georgette Heyer, well, this is not the worst. But it's not great, either. Beaton uses the requisite amount of Regency vocabulary, imitates many of the features of Heyer's heros and heroines and surrounding characters, but the book just never quite feels genuine. Minerva isn't really all that sympathetic (most of the plot turns upon the fact that she is a prig, which makes her the target of the malevolent machinations of a pack of evil dandies), and Sylvester borrows the pallid, distant charm of one of Heyer's aristocratic heroes but lacks the humor and warmth that might redeem him, in spite of an overbaked sex scene that seemed really out of place for the period. Finally, seeming to have run out of options, Beaton paints herself in to a corner by nonsensically separating her lovers but then has to resort to a plot trick to get them back together.

But the writing was workmanlike, at least, and I might have found it amusing had not the reading been marred, at least initially, by peculiarities in the reading by Charlotte Anne Dore. Making use of a nice, throaty voice and a pleasant, almost intimate tone, Dore does a very nice job of creating different voices for her characters (and is particularly adept whenever a child speaks in the story), but I do so wish that she had better breath control and had done a spot more homework on the correct pronunciation of words with which she seems to have been unfamiliar.

Dore often put annoying pauses in between words in illogical places, breathing sometimes several times in one sentence, rather than with the punctuation, so that the sense of what she was saying was often interrupted, a habit that became really grating. Many times, she pronounced "a" as "ay" rather than "uh" before common nouns ( in, for example, "there was ay cook, ay housekeeper..."), put a "k" on the end of "anything" and "something" ( and not when a lower class person was speaking, which would perhaps make sense, but when the narrator was speaking, who presumably ought to know better), and didn't know how to pronounce many words at all, for example (among many): curricle (cuh-ricle as in curry, NOT kyoo-ricle as in curate or cuticle); marquess (markwess NOT markess); parental (pah-rental NOT pair-ental); portrait NOT portrayt; and more egregiously, parsiMONIous NOT parSIMonous (I suppose Dore just read this one wrong, skipping over a syllable, but that begs the question, where were her editors? Was there no one in the sound booth listening in?)

A little more planning, dictionary work, and practice before the recording would be well worth the time of this otherwise very appealing and often charming performer. As it was, I really don't think I could do it again and would avoid her readings in the future. Just too distracting!

Alas, taken altogether, not quite worth the price of admission, and I doubt I will spring for the rest of series.

Would you ever listen to anything by M. C. Beaton again?

Not in this series.

What three words best describe Charlotte Anne Dore’s voice?

Throaty and sympathetic, but under-rehearsed.

Did Minerva inspire you to do anything?

Nope. Not to be a prig?

Any additional comments?

I think I've said more than enough.

Just good

I began listening to this book and gradually got more and more interested more so that I will listening to the entire six books. However, if they all follow the same storyline like this one with such naive girls, I may just die. The Vicar also needs to be flogged and those darn hounds he keeps purchasing and worshiping over his family and parishioners needs to be sold off. I wanted to pull my hair out when Minerva went on the drive not knowing what she was heading into and died laughing when she walked in on Lady Godiva and started reading then again when she went back in and heard her with the colonel. However, six daughters and I am sure he is going to sell them all off until someone takes him into hand. I assume this series is going to have me laughing and seething mad all the same.