Author: Karen Joy Fowler
Publisher: Listen and Live
Rating: WARTY!
This was read by Kimberly Schraf and not very well, either, although to be fair, she had a much better delivery than that of a Brick through an electric sheep.
This novel was so bad that I couldn't even get through the first CD. I'm sure there are people who enjoy this kind of thing, but I am not, nor will I ever be one of them. These characters were uninteresting, snotty, bratty, clueless, pointless people, who boast abuse of women and genderism amongst their "virtues", and who had nothing to offer me. Their lives were normal to the point of being tedious, and if I want to listen to people like that, or hear of their lives, I only have to stop work and sit and pay attention to everyone around me, and I can get all I want. I really don't want more of that in a novel which I read for escapism!
There was not a single character I cared about, or was interested in, and I sure-as-hell didn't need to listen to their tiresome, ordinary histories. I could not find anything redeeming at all on that first disk; there was nothing in which to develop even a mild or passing interest, and since I was headed for the library, to turn in other books I'd actually read and enjoyed, I simply ejected this one with them.
I think the cover says it all, and that little yellow star? That indicates it's a pariah even in its own country. I don't know what the hell these people use as a definition for "major motion picture", but it seems to me that the fact that the movie completely, disastrously, and dismally bombed is more than sufficient indication of the level this novel is at, no matter what kind of a "best seller" it was supposed to have been. Time to say the te deum (pronounced t-e-d-i-u-m) and move on.
Note that, out of respect for Jane Austen, and to make up for this sorry volume, I will review Austen's Lady Susan on audio book forthwith, if not third with.
