HARD TIMES

In Dickens’s story of the horrors of a utilitarian upbringing, reason and facts are everything, and imagination and creativity are nothing. The narrator’s British accent goes well with Dickens’s overly dramatic and lush prose. He uses different English accents for the numerous male characters, some speech defects for others and a breathy falsetto voice for all the women. While a straight rendition of the dialogue would be an improvement, luckily the story is mainly narrative. Some classics simply may not translate well either to audiobooks or to the 1990’s. E.F. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT 94]