BLEAK HOUSE

If you've read this thick book, brimming over with notable characters, plots and subplots, you can be forgiven for failing to notice what we discover on this tape--that Dickens has ventured into cross-sexuality. "These young ladies are my five boys," quoth Beatie Edney, the British actress who conarrates this Penguin version. She meant to say, "These, young ladies, are my five boys." But she lacks the vocal control and the ear to pull off the simple line. Even when giving a line its true value, which is most of the time, she bores one so that one must work hard to concentrate on the story. Her confrere, the distinguished Ronald Pickup, is so good, so Dickensian, that by contrast she sounds worse than perhaps she otherwise would. Y.R. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/NOV 98]