The Great Gatsby

By: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Narrated by: Mark White

Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's Summary

"The Great Gatsby", F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.

©2020 Francis Scott Fitzgerald (P)2020 Page2Page

The Better Narration

I purchased this version after listening to another with an inferior narrator. This reader knew how to pronounce French and did the voices better.

Author mispronounce could several words

Those few words make me wonder—What? Metrpoleee? It’s metropole —and several leaving g out a minor syllable or —The accent on the wrong syllable.For those who notice, it’s distracting

Many errors in this reading

This narrator is very talented at varying voices for different characters. He’s easy to follow and understand. BUT he mispronounced many words and even skipped phrases at times. Sometimes what he misread completely changed the meaning. It’s a shame, because he has the potential to be really outstanding.

Many misread words

Reader has a good voice but mispronounces many words either from reading too fast or not knowing their pronunciations
Here's a partial list:

Montauk
Homogeneity
Turbaned
Doncaster
innocently ( he says "honestly" )
Cannes
Little Girl Bay ( he reads it "point")
Antecedents
Very read as "every"
Movies as "moves"
Kapiolani ( calls it "Kopalony" with an Italian sound)
Incessantly
Postulation
Tried read as "turned"
The only thing - read as "only the thing"
"Don't tell me old sport" - reader adds "that" after me
Vigil read as "viguel"
Strata as "stratum"
Majority
Interminable ( mispronounced twice)
Revolved as "resolved"
Deficiency as "defiant"
Greenwich
Commensurate

Some sentences also put the emphasis on the wrong syllable

Someone Give This Actor a Dictionary

This could have been a really good performance. The sense of drama is there. The voices are distinct. What's wrong? An unforgivable number of mispronounced words. Fitzgerald has one of the best prose styles out there. Well, Mark White just doesn't know all the words in the book. That's the long and short of it. He's regularly flubbing them, and I don't mean just tripping on them. I mean he says them as if he knows how they're pronounced, but sadly, he doesn't know how they're pronounced and it's embarrassing. I thought about making a list of instances for this review, but that would be a waste of time. Believe me, there's a howler at least once every ten pages, and probably more. So if you like English prose and like to have all the consonants and vowels and syllables pronounced, stay away from this performance. It's careless about the medium, and it's a shame.

great literary work, meh narration

Fitzgerald is one of those authors who tells his story and every so often takes your breath away with the most heartbreaking beautiful, poignant sentences. It is both a period piece and timeless because it's about love and loss and the interconnectedness of the human experience.

Sorry to say I was disappointed by the narration. I don't think it did the prose justice, the dialogue was not differentiated enough and so was confusing, and I thought the tone was all wrong for most of the dialogue. It wasn't awful, and other people love it. I wasn't one of them.

Bad Narration

Listening to this is like listening to a 60 yearold professor that is burned out read me a book.

Great Gatsby

I didn't like the book really and the narrators voice made me want to fall asleep

Terrible narration

Don't waste your money on this audio version. it doesn't even read the same as the book.

Narrator

He mispronounced a number of words. Does no one check this. It was annoying and unnecessary

A Great Story

Very enjoyable, even better than the movie, it was shorter than I thought, I listened to it in one afternoon.

Good story, background noises in the recording

There are some really odd background noises in this recording. It sounds like children playing. The narrator doesn't put in much effort to perform different voice for different characters, so can be confusing at time.

Beautiful story. Mediocre reading. Background noises intruding

The reading is ok - not really capturing the utter beauty of this book, and it has some odd dialogue renditions. But the strangest thing (I thought I was hallucinating at first, but rewound to check the second time it occurred) is noise of children seeping in. A broom cupboard lockdown project? Which is admirable in a way and good luck to them. I did only pay 78 pence, so I can’t complain too much.

If you want just to get through the text for an exam this could work. But if you want an exceptional rendition, true to the quality of the writing, try the Jake Gyllenhaal reading, which I bought instead.