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The Mayor of Casterbridge

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The Mayor of Casterbridge

By: Thomas Hardy
Narrated by: Pamela Garelick
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About this listen

 From its spectacular opening, the astonishing scene in which drunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a passing sailor at a country fair, to the breathtaking series of discoveries at its conclusion, The Mayor of Casterbridge claims a unique place among Thomas Hardy's finest and most powerful novels.

Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story builds into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power, only to achieve a most bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, "Hardy's Lord Jim...his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction."

(P)2001 Blackstone Audiobooks. Originally published in Great Britain in 1886. Classics Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Psychological Fiction Marriage

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BOW DOWN TO THE MASTER WRITER AND THE MASTER NARRATER. BRILLIANT WORK & PERFORMANCE! THANK YOU !

A MAJOR FEAST...

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A first class reading of a remarkable story. Thomas Hardy at his best. The narrator seems to evoke the mood of the times and I was enthralled from start to finish. Highly recommended

Excellant

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This masterpiece, with all its twists and turns of narrative, with its characters revealed to us layer by layer, one gripping bit of detail at a time, requires no effort in recommendation. Yet a pleasant surprise awaits the listeners who, like me, were as yet unacquainted with the voice of Pamela Garelick: That velvety voice will, masterfully, wrap you in the ambience of each scene that the only way out of Casterbridge and its surroundings will be to stop the audio playback?you will ?see? the world Hardy depicts and ?meet? its inhabitants and be moved with whatever stirs them, ready or not! Such is the power of Hardy's and Garelick?s arts combined.

Great art, narrated by a great artist

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What disappointed you about The Mayor of Casterbridge?

The narrator I couldn't bear him especially the Scottish voice he attempted it was awful.

What could Thomas Hardy have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Different narrator and possibly an abridged version.

How could the performance have been better?

With a good narrator you forget that one person is reading several parts but with a poor one you get to dread certain voices they try as they are so poor.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Mayor of Casterbridge?

Its not so much scenes I would cut as the narrator attempting accents that I would have cut, if not done well they jarr to much and detract from the story.

terrible narration

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