TESTAMENT OF YOUTH

From "provincial young-ladyhood," the sheltered Brittain plunged into the scarlet maelstrom of WWI as a nurse on the Western Front, an experience she recounts emotionally though with cloying affectation. The narrator, having already played the author in a BBC television dramatization of this property, brings immense personality, style, depth and verve to the sound recording. She does not so much read the book as portray Brittain reading the book. One hears a little pesky ambient noise and tape hiss now and then and the slight muffling of a noise reduction device in need of adjustment. But these deficiencies hardly blunt Campbell's fine rendering. Y.R. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB 97]