THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER

Tom’s adventures continue to be engaging, funny, innocent, and insightful all at the same time, and are full of great characters living their nineteenth-century lives with all of America's confidence and wide-open possibilities. I wish I could report to you that William Dufris, usually a very reliable narrator, is up to the task, but alas, I cannot. Dufris adopts a homey, meandering voice that mostly sounds tentative and doesn't match Twain's energy. He tries to liven up a bit during dialogue scenes, but the character voices he uses for Tom and Huck don't have much depth. This is a serviceable version of the book, and if you haven't read it in a while, it's worth a listen. But it's not the classic version it could be. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2009]