THE LOST WORLD

THE LOST WORLD (1912) marked the first Professor Challenger novel and a new series for Arthur Conan Doyle. The narrator is newspaperman Edward Malone, who chronicles an expedition up the Amazon to verify the existence of a prehistoric world populated by dinosaurs. Michael Prichard handles the dialogue with a good bit of bluster, which to be sure, forms a big part of Doyle's larger-than-life characters. Looking for ways to downplay some of this stridency, as Prichard admirably does with the narration, brings some necessary subtlety to a melodrama that itself can seem like something of a fossil. G.H. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 03/JAN 04]