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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

By: James Joyce
Narrated by: Michael Orenstein
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About this listen

The intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions with which he has been raised. He finally leaves for abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist. The work is an early example of some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later be represented in a more developed manner by Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The novel, which has had a "huge influence on novelists across the world", was ranked by Modern Library as the third greatest English-language novel of the 20th century.

Public Domain (P)2013 Trout Lake Media Classics Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
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The narration opens well but doesn't keep it up. Michael Orenstein has a brave stab at the Irish accent but it slips, most notably with the older characters, making them sound rather West Country English mixed with a bit of Pirates of the Caribbean. There are also some inexplicably long pauses between paragraphs (presumably because of breaks in the recording session), suggesting that no-one from the production company actually listened to the finished product. Mistakes too -- "ellipsoidal ball" read as "ellipsoidal fall" being one but there are others too. In the end, when I thought something didn't sound right, I went to my Penguin Modern Classics copy to check. Did Michael Orenstein read from an uncorrected version? I don't know but some of the faulty words just didn't make sense in context. If I was listening again, I think I'd go for an Irish narrator. Alan Smyth read "Dubliners" very well, I thought. Maybe try his version.

Not quite Irish

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A geat rendition that delivers the nuances of the language and brings the Dublin tone to life

A potrait

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This is the second Audible "fail" I have experienced. The voice sounds like a robot.

Disappointing quality

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