Excellent book

This book has some fascinating insights into Austen’s work, so I would highly recommend it. The narration is monotonous, yet calm, so this didn’t put ms off the book.

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Interesting but...

Any additional comments?

Every chapter, in itself, was interesting explaining the mores of the time; mourning, dress etc. But since there is only a small number of Jane Austin novels the same events and characters got explained again and again from different perspectives. Not a criticism of the author though (nor of Jane Austin!) and well worth a listen. Perhaps it may have been better to dip into a chapter at a time rather than as a continuous read.

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1 person found this helpful

Awful narration

Wonderful book and the most awful narration I have ever heard
Read it don’t listen to it

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1 person found this helpful

Fascinating insights for those who know an love Jane Austen’s work

If you know the novels Jane Austen well and are fascinated by the world her characters inhabit then you will really enjoy the in depth explorations into the sub- text, socio-cultural influences and clever subtleties of the author’s technique that you may not have picked up on before. I found it fascinating and it inspires you to revisit the books if you haven’t read them for a while.
The narration however - I’m convinced it’s a computer generated voice (Paul Collins...PC...hmmm - prove me wrong if he exists). Totally robotic intonation like the voice of google translate and some of the jarring pronunciations give it away - “El-in-or”, “Captain Ben-wick” and best of all “Northang - grabby”.
It’s still a good listen because it is so fascinating if you are into Jane Austen but this wonderful book deserves to be narrated by a person who seems as interested as the listener will be.

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3 people found this helpful

Fun.

A great book with annoying moments. If you can look past some very irritating mispronunciations and a slightly dull reading voice it's a great book with some fascinating information and plenty of points to ponder further.

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1 person found this helpful

Great book ruined by terrible narration

The book is well written and interesting but the narration is terrible. I'm convinced this is an AI voice because it's so monotonous and quite frankly ruins it. Paul Collins is suspiciously the narrator of only this book. Making me think even more that it's AI. If the publisher is reading this please, for the love of god, get a human to narrate it, or if it was a human, get another one who doesn't ruin this otherwise excellent book.

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Austen wrote novels, not cryptic crosswords

Mullan establishes up front that his goal is to explore historical context and the linguistic theory associated with Austen's oeuvre... but he happily dismisses the significance of feminist (and presumably other theoretical) readings of same, so proudly that you just know he was the guy on the Literature 101 course who memorised every theoretical term and definition in the course documents and volunteered boring, by the book responses in every discussion.

At one point he starts to get close to addressing what later readers found in the texts... and side steps that entirely.
Austen wrote novels, not puzzles, and Mullan doesn't seem to care about teasing out reader response at all.

While I found it smug, didactic, and reductive, this research is absolutely impeccable and well organised, and I imagine extremely useful for academic work (though with this audio version I can't get a look at any bibliography).

Sadly Paul Collins sounds like he was generated by Google, extremely disinterested in the text. Something a little disingenuous about being told about Austen by two men... can't think why.

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8 people found this helpful

Odd narration and clunky text

Very odd narration with some weird pronouncation and an almost, robotic automated voice a lot of the time, reader sounds bored or half asleep at points.
Also some very clunky awkward writing with strange repeated sentences you wouldn't get away with in secondary school essay!

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Fascinating insight into Austen and her novels.

A fascinating insight into Austen and her novels. Even to me, and I've read scores of books about Jane Austen's books, this felt fresh and insightful. Initially I thought the narration a bit wooden but it grew on me. However the pronunciation of some of the names was annoying.

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I wish I had read this myself.

A detailed and academic book which I wish I had read myself.
The unvarying speed of delivery and the repetitive cadences of the narrator’s voice put me to sleep and undermined all interest in the content. If the narrative had been shared by a female voice and the reader had been able to characterise the male character’s voices and differentiate them from the narrative voice it would have created a more lively soundscape. I will read the author’s next book on Dickens myself.

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