The Watsons, Sanditon cover art

The Watsons, Sanditon

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The Watsons, Sanditon

By: Jane Austen
Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
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About this listen

One abandoned, one unfinished, these short works show Austen equally at home with romance (a widowed clergyman with four daughters must needs be in search of a husband or two in The Watsons) and with social change (a new, commercial seaside resort in Sanditon). Typically touching, funny, charming and sharp.

©2010 Naxos Audiobooks (P)2010 Naxos Audiobooks Anthologies & Short Stories Classics Fiction Historical Historical Fiction Romance Short Stories Victorian Funny

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Editor reviews

Even Austen's unfinished novels will excite her fans. In the first of these novels, abandoned after five chapters, Emma Watson returns to her widowed father and crude siblings after being raised in refinement by a wealthy aunt. Austen died after completing 11 chapters of the second, about an attempt to build a state-of-the-art resort by the sea. Anna Bentinck narrates The Watsons in a languid, humorless, patrician style, sometimes pausing between every phrase. Her more robust treatment of Sandition delivers plenty of satirical humor and vivid characterizations. Indeed, her impersonations are the best part of both works.
All stars
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I love Jane Austen's completed work and just wanted to read everything there is. However, these are the products of a 'writer in training', of inferior quality compared to her later and completed work. And they are, indeed, just fragments! By the time you start understanding who the characters are and get to see the beginning of the plot, it's all over!

Beginnings

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If you want a textbook example of how to bring a literary work to life, this it. Anna Bentinck's performance is absolutely brilliant, with just the right blend of humour, delicacy and sharpness. She differentiates between the characters perfectly and maintains that differentiation with incredible consistency. That's hard to achieve but she manages it splendidly. The excellent narration makes the listening experience all the more poignant, particularly in the case of Sanditon, with the sense of how it might have progressed had Jane Austen lived to finish it. Despite both novels being incomplete, I still have to give five stars for the story for the simple reason that a work by Jane Austen, even an incomplete one, is still far better than a great deal written by those who have followed in her illustrious footsteps.

Perfect narration

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The narrator is ghastly. Why do people think anyone can just narrate a book? You don't need to make ridiculous voices - the story speaks for itself. The author would be horrified to hear her story being massacred in this way. I couldnt listen to it.

Terrible

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