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Waiting for Sunrise

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Waiting for Sunrise

By: William Boyd
Narrated by: Jack Rowan
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, sits in the waiting room of the city's preeminent psychiatrist as he anxiously ponders the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis. When the enigmatic, intensely beautiful Hettie Bull walks in, Lysander is immediately drawn to her, unaware of how destructive the consequences of their subsequent affair will be. One year later, home in London, Lysander finds himself entangled in the dangerous web of wartime intelligence - a world of sex, scandal and spies that is slowly, steadily permeating every corner of his life....

©2012 William Boyd (P)2020 Penguin Audio 20th Century Historical Fiction World War I Fiction England

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All stars
Most relevant  
Solid story by Boyd, but absolutely ruined by a narrator who constantly mispronounces words, doesn’t seem to know how to pronounce common English place names like Winchelsea and Folkestone and speaks throughout in a completely inappropriate Estuary English drawl full of glottal stops.

That type of read might be appropriate for a modern novel set among ‘the yoof’ of Sarf London, but it’s a disaster for a story set in Edwardian England.

Audible - can you refund my credit please: it was simply impossible to enjoy this book given the awfulness of the reading.

Ruined by awful narration

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The reader seemed to be incapable of accents and pronounced various words quite incorrectly. This is the first time I have had to complain about this on Audible. This may have influenced my enjoyment of the book itself which I found not to be up to Boyd’s usual standard.

Poor performance

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I’m confident that a 1910s West End actor would not have lost his ‘t’s in the middle of quite so many words. And I'm sure he'd know how to pronounce Folkestone. Perfect for a Nick Hornby but very, very distracting here. Ultimately made it almost impossible to suspend disbelief.

Spoiled by t glottalisation and mispronunciation

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It is a pity that the narration is so poor. It is monotonous without any feel, inflection or variance of tone. Nevertheless I stuck with it and eventually I became unaware of this problem. The story was quite interesting and had enough pace. Not the best work of fiction but I enjoyed it enough.

Poor Narration

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I enjoyed the narration most of the time but there were some jarring mispronunciations particularly of place names. I found the story absorbing and exciting but I would have preferred a clearer ending. Perhaps the whole point of the book is that people alter the ‘truth’ so that they can get on with their lives.

Complicated

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I read this book a little while ago and suggested it for my upcoming book club. I got it on audible to remind myself about the plot etc and was hugely disappointed by the reader. His accent, pronunciation and pace were so poor it jarred. Some readers are better than others but this was something else. This is the second William Boyd I have read. His storytelling is wonderful. His characters fit the period and are beautifully drawn. I am a great fan of audible but shall stick to the book for William Boyd in future.

Frustrating

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narrator a bit irritating
several words mispronounced and not quite the accent for the officer upper class hero.
Otherwise very enjoyable and gripping

excellent story

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I don’t for one minute think British readers should all speak RP, but if a reader is going to assign accents to characters, then some historically-informed authenticity would help. Here, First World War British army officers are assigned a variety of regional working class accents that just doesn’t seem believable and which really detracts from the enjoyment of the boom. The main character too, speaks in an estuary drawl. I’m fine with the reader’s own London estuary accent for the narrative passages but for the dialogue someone should have directed him to be a bit more authentic.

Some poor accent choices

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This has to be the worst read book on Audible. I am surprised that Penguin (and William Boyd?) chose this actor to read it. Huge number of mispronunciations and a very irritating Cockney accent for virtually all the characters. All they did was jar and get in the way of the story.

William Boyd’s ‘Any Human Heart’ and ‘Restless’ are superb novels. I thought this was a much weaker effort with poor pacing and too much descriptive flannel which added little to the narrative drive of the story.

Final verdict- disappointing.

Appallingly read - disappointing story

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I’m a fan of William Boyd ( Any Human Heart is terrific ) but this book was ruined by the narrator’s complete lack of ability to do any accents at all apart from cockney, to vary the the different characters voices ( one was so grating it hurt to listen to him ) and finally he couldn’t actually pronounce words. Quadrangle became quandrangle and he pronounced the ‘ l ‘ in Folkestone to name two of many. It did distract from the story when the narrator couldn’t actually read or got the emphasis on the wrong syllable of a word.

Interesting story ruined by awful narration

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