New Reviews: Classics

This immersive adaptation of Montgomery's classic features a Canadian ensemble with Sandra Oh as the narrator, and Catherine O'Hara, Victor Garber, and Michela Luci playing the main characters. When 11-year-old Anne mistakenly arrives in Avonlea, she brings her vivid imagination and bright personality to Marilla and Matthew's quiet farm. As she portrays Anne, Luci's infectious... Read More

In this energetic full-cast audio adaptation of the loosely autobiographical 1849 Dickens classic, the novel's sharp wit and the hero's romantic adventurism are happily brought to the fore. As Ncuti Gatwa (star of "Doctor Who") leads an outstanding international cast, listeners follow young David Copperfield, a brokenhearted orphan, to boarding school and then to an... Read More

Jonathan Booth's narration of Donne's prose is quite strong, although it's handicapped by the necessarily limited range of emotions called for by these two works dedicated to the theology of disease and death. In an era when disease was generally understood to be the punishment for sin, Donne interpreted his near-fatal illness as God's retribution for his adventurous early... Read More

Big Brother, Thought Police, doublethink, omnipresent surveillance. Portraying rebellious romantics Winston Smith and Julia in this classic dystopian novel, narrators Andrew Garfield and Cynthia Erivo lead a crew of inspired English actors in creating a full-cast, filmlike 21st-century reimagining of one of the twentieth century's most important novels. The production is... Read More

Georgina Sutton delivers a crisp, precise performance of this audiobook, which follows the Vernon family through three volumes of Victorian history and manners. With a lovely voice and crystal-clear accent, Sutton maneuvers through a ponderous plot with as much life as one could offer. Her pace is brisk, and her enunciation is razor-sharp. Indeed, Sutton's skill drives the... Read More

Wallace Shawn's performance is spirited, hilarious, and dark--typically all at once. His rousing voice captures the multiple dystopian themes in this new production of the classic Japanese novella. A psychiatric patient describes his time in "Kappa Land," which is populated by mysterious spirits who are known for their menacing presence. Akutagawa deftly weaves in the topic of... Read More

With the jaunty ease of a favorite uncle holding forth before a crackling fire, narrator Matt Addis recounts this wild tale revolving around a gentleman who returns home to his ancestral manor only to discover that there is a mythical giant worm lurking in an underground cave below it. He soon finds that the beautiful but coldly manipulative widow next door, who has unwanted... Read More

There is something soothing about returning to the lost art of letter writing with this audiobook. Add to this the elegant style of the legendary Jane Austen and the equally elegant performance of Kate Reading, and the result is fine, indeed. Reading's voice is calm, measured, and appropriately slow paced. Even though we are hearing details about lives we largely know little... Read More

Rupert Degas delivers what sounds like a full-cast performance--with every accent, every dialect, every nuance in place. This grim novel is based on writer Albert Maltz's imprisonment after he insulted the red-baiting House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. The 1950s book was originally suppressed for its political message, a plea for prison reform. Degas is completely... Read More

Narrator Rupert Degas tackles this offbeat "experiment in biography" with conspicuous gusto and the enthusiasm of a man given an assignment he feels born to perform. In 1925, British author Symons was introduced to a previously unknown novel, Frederick Rolfe's HADRIAN THE SEVENTH. This eccentric work led Symons to pursue its even more eccentric author, who styled himself as... Read More

Many varied characters inhabit this trio of stories, and Clare Wille creates a distinctive voice for each one. Set in and around a fictional English town during the years bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, each story unfolds as its own little drama, and Wille masterfully delivers each one appropriately. Not only can Wille develop each character's personality with... Read More

There is no one like Edith Wharton to explore the complexities of human relationships, and narrator Laurel Lefkow is an excellent guide to that exploration. This audiobook features Charity Royall, a young woman who is struggling against society's constraints as she tries to develop her own sense of self. When she becomes caught up in an inappropriate relationship with a man of... Read More

Clare Corbett's silvery, refined tone and light, quick delivery suit this best known of English novelist Rose Macaulay's books. Published in 1956, it begins, "'Take my camel, dear,'" said my Aunt Dot as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." As an eclectic group, including Aunt Dot, an Anglican clergyman, Father Chantry-Pigg, and the narrator, Laurie,... Read More

This is the latest of the classic works by Joseph Conrad ably narrated by David Horovitch. This 1915 work, relatively unknown, concerns a drifter named Axel Heyst who runs a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago and his relationship with an English girl. He saves her from her employer, and then she saves Heyst from himself. There is quite a bit of... Read More

Linda Jones narrates this classic memoir with compassion and authenticity. Some of its quirky observations haven't worn well with the passage of time and may turn off some contemporary listeners. But Jones adds emphasis and a playful tone to Thoreau's list of budget items and explanation that he is a squatter on his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson's farm. First published in 1854,... Read More

Narrator Linda Jones narrates three of the most beloved talks of transcendentalist legend Henry David Thoreau in this new audiobook collection. Reflecting on the importance of experiencing the transformative beauty of walking and exploring the natural world, the three talks in this audiobook highlight Thoreau's fascination with the contemplative life. The works include warnings... Read More

With an evident love of language and a deft ear for biting humor, Clare Corbett has a field day narrating this delightfully inventive 1918 social satire, which savages eugenics, education, bureaucracy, and gender roles, among other hot topics of the early twentieth century. The premise is simple: To avoid the disaster of another Great War (WWI) the "Ministry of Brains" is... Read More

Clare Corbett's sympathetic performance of Rose Macaulay's 1950 novel about the costs of war highlights its mix of the satiric and the heartfelt. When 17-year-old Barbary is sent to live with her conventional father in London after growing up semi-wild in southern France with her mother, she finds adventure and comfort among the vagabonds and criminals who inhabit London's... Read More