DAVID COPPERFIELD

At 34 hours in length, this is quite a tome, but there’s no one better qualified than Simon Vance to lead us through this audio journey. He parses the author's long sentences well, pausing sufficiently to make the details easy to follow while still maintaining a quick enough pace to keep the story going. Most enjoyable is his voicing of the myriad characters who appear in the narrative—and characters they certainly are. Vance times their occasionally hilarious exchanges especially well. All of this is delivered in a manner that suggests that Vance revels in Dickens’s prose and sly humor, and the listener cannot help but revel along with him. Three cheers for Vance—and not the least for his stamina! A.E.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2009]