Well worth purchasing.

This has already become a favourite book of ours and we've listened to it several times while traveling in the car. it is a wonderful performance of a great old book. I first read this book as a child and have revisited it many times. This rendition brings another facet to the overall experience of the story. White had a knack of creating such an intimate bond between the reader and the characters so that an.amazing sense of pathos could permeate the story. His authorial style was both light and profound. A lot of the humour derives from the anachronisms that proliferate throughout the text, such as Merlin wishing he was still on the company water, or performing psychoanalysis on the unfortunate Wat. White also had a remarkable way of slipping between tenses, narrative points and prose styles, and thus is an extremely sophisticated piece of writing from a literary point of view. This is something often overlooked by contemporary literary critics who lionise Wolfe or Molly Bloom for much the same thing. Yet White was able to write with as much literary wit
as anyone. His choice of genre, in this case, was both his undoing and his greatest accomplishment, first because the novel falls within the fantasy genre which critics don't take seriously enough; and the second because this genre is immensely popular with people who actually read books for enjoyment and not just for a living. Reading work of this calibre and complexity is a challenge and the producers and Neville Jason have done a fine job. This audio rendition is enjoyable to listen to and manages to convey a great deal of the warmth and charm that undergrids the original text. I highly recommend this audio book. To steal a phrase from Bernard Black, this book will make you laugh - it'll make you cry. It might very well change you too.

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1 person found this helpful

An all time favourite made even better as audio.

A childhood favourite of mine, this book is even better read ( listened to ) as an adult. Enchanting. Reader good, though not exceptional, but the words and characters have their own magic and I loved it from start to finish.

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