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North and South

Written by: Elizabeth Gaskell
Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
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Publisher's Summary

Exclusively from Audible

Written at the request of Charles Dickens, North and South is a book about rebellion; it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Gaskell expertly blends individual feeling with social concern, and her heroine, Margaret Hale, is one of the most original creations of Victorian literature.

When Margaret Hale's father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience she is forced to leave her comfortable home in the tranquil countryside of Hampshire and move with her family to the fictional industrial town of Milton in the north of England. Though at first disgusted by her new surroundings, she witnesses the brutality wrought by the Industrial Revolution and becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers. Sympathetic to the poor she makes friends among them and develops a fervent sense of social justice. She clashes with the mill-owner and self-made man, John Thornton, who is contemptuous of his workers. However, their fierce opposition masks a deeper attraction.

Gaskell based her depiction of Milton on Manchester, where she lived as the wife of a Unitarian minister. She was an accomplished writer, much of her work published in Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words including North and South which was originally published as a serial. She was also friends with Charlotte Brontë and after her death, her father, Patrick Brontë, chose Gaskell to write The Life of Charlotte Brontë.

Narrator Biography

Whether she's up on stage, behind the microphone or in front of the camera, Juliet Stevenson never fails to charm her audience...whoever they may be. Acting roles in Truly, Madly Deeply, Emma, Bend It like Beckham and Mona Lisa Smile have cemented her status as one of the great British actresses of our time. Meanwhile, her popular performances of hits such as Apple Tree Yard, the book that was turned into a TV series that people just couldn't stop talking about, have earned her an overwhelming amount of well-deserved praise for her spoken word talents.

Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Classics Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Romance
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What the critics say

"[An] admirable story...full of character and power." (Charles Dickens)

What listeners say about North and South

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Profile Image for Rebecca

Excellent Victorian classic

This book is a real classic and the narration is great! Gaskells focus on the struggles of workers and masters really brings the time and place to Life. But the book also feels very relevant in 2019

4 people found this helpful

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Profile Image for Laura Fernandez

Lovely Read

Juliet Stevenson's reading is expressive, clear, and really brought the book to life. She also helped with some of the slower parts with her dynamic reading.

2 people found this helpful

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Profile Image for Debra de Jong

A story with lots of points to chew on

I loved the contrast of both sides of the story brought together with even a possible solution leaves you feeling hopeful. Narrator has done an excellent Job with the different voices Which were true to the movie. The movie series was also very accurate to the book.

1 person found this helpful

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Profile Image for Rebecca

Socially Aware Pride and Prejudice.

Literally the only problem with this book is that is isnt another 18 hours long. Why must all these amazing love stories end so abruptly!

1 person found this helpful

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Classic

Well- performed version of such a timeless classic about class, industry, belief, and of course, love. #Audible1

1 person found this helpful

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Profile Image for SharonAmazon Customer

North and South

A complex story about the unique differences and beliefs between the privileged class and workers in trade. When each decides to attempt to understand the common humanity life unfolds in kinder ways. Thoroughly enjoyed the story, however, felt cheated at the end wanted to know more about what happened with Margaret and her beloved.

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Profile Image for Yvette

Very enjoyable!

It was very enjoyable , however it ended to soon. I wanted more story development at the end.

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Loved it

Tried to read this novel years ago after watching the wonderful BBC adaptation and found it really difficult to get into. Juliet Stevenson’s narration is great, I have rarely listened to a narrator who makes each character so distinct and memorable.

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Excellent reading of an engrossing story

North and South rings with echoes of Jane Austen, but is meatier and with darker elements than Pride and Prejudice.
The reading is wonderful, with each character distinct, and the northern vs. southern accents well executed.

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Profile Image for Emily Allain

Beautifully performed!

This is one of my favourite novels and the narrator does it such justice with wonderful acting

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  • Sally
  • 2010-01-04

Delightful

ABOUT THIS AUDIO RECORDING
Juliet Stevenson, where you you been? This is one of the most difficult books for reading I've listened to (several different English accents, northern cockney, southern low and high)--many different voices required, and Stevenson is master of all of them. I think she is the best reader I've ever heard, bar none. Really, the best.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Think of Elizabeth Gaskell as Jane Austen with teeth. This is a thoughtful period piece, describing the social upheaval resulting from the industrial revolution, and Gaskell (herself a lady) makes a great effort see all sides, the workers' and the mill owners'.

You may be browsing for a North and South audiobook because you've lately swooned over the BBC's recent miniseries by that title. (Thank you, Richard Armitage.) If so, you won't be disappointed in the original. It's as good as the movie (a strange compliment for a book, I know).

Margaret Hale is a gentlewoman from the south of England, lately displaced to the northern manufacturing town of Milton (fictional), where she meets the focused and brooding Mr. Thornton, cotton manufacturer extraordinaire. We love Margaret from the outset, and it's such a pleasure to come to understand and love Mr. Thornton.

NOTE: beware the ending
For all the greatness of the story, the ending is wimpy--400 pages of romantic angst, and it resolves in few passionate repititions of "Margaret!Margaret! Margaret!" and a paltry embrace. Those Regency and Victorian writers just don't know how to end a story. I recommend listening to the audiobook until the last 5 minutes. Then turn on the BBC video (also available on Netflix "watch instantly"), and sate yourself in a real ending. (Again, thank you Richard Armitage.)

253 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Susannah McBride
  • 2009-12-09

Fabulous Book, Made Even Better by the Narrator

I loved this book! It is "Pride and Prejudice" for the Victorian era, and I fell in love with all the characters just as deeply. The advantage over Austen's book is that it has a bit of a social conscience, but I felt it flowed very well with the story. The story telling was lovely, and the discussion of Victorian attitudes to industry were very interesting. The author discusses weighty things without being tedious or overbearing, and I loved that both my brain and my heart were engaged.
The narrator Juliet Stevenson did a magnificent job, especially with the Northern accents. It is sometimes hard for women to read men's voices well, but she made John Thornton much more sexy than I've heard anyone portray Mr. Darcy. I will definitely look for more books read by her, as well as more books by Elizabeth Gaskell, whom I've only just discovered after years of reading "classics." I also enjoyed that every chapter began with a relevant quote from a poem or song. Another of my favorite authors, Mary Stewart, also does that (perhaps Gaskell was her inspiration for this?). It really added a whole extra layer of description and meaning.

82 people found this helpful

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  • David
  • 2013-03-26

A worthy Victorian classic

An easy test of whether you'll like this book is whether you like Gaskell's contemporaries: George Eliot and Charles Dickens are the most obvious, though the plot borrows a bit of Jane Eyre and a bit of Pride and Prejudice. Gaskell writes closer to Eliot's style, but with a bit of Dickens's social consciousness. In the end, North and South ends up a romance, but the romantic obstacle course navigated by the romantic leads is not the most compelling element.

North and South features as the protagonist 19-year-old Margaret Hale, whose father, upon having a crisis of conscience, quits his job as a country parson in idyllic southern England and moves his wife and daughter north to the industrial cotton-mill town of Milton. To say Margaret and her mother don't like their new home is an understatement — they hate it, and Margaret is certainly not enamored of the wealthy industrialist Mr. Thornton, who, undaunted by either her mannerly disdain or his mother's cold mercenary disapproval, is struck with love at first sight. (I felt this was one of the weakest parts of the book, as it's never explained just what made this prissy southern girl so irresistible to him.) He then spends the rest of the novel being in love with her despite resigning himself to not having a chance with her, and Margaret spends the rest of the novel denying that she feels anything but disdain for him, while constantly worrying about what he thinks of her.

This thread winds it way through much more compelling and illustrative social dramas: workers' strikes and grinding poverty, the bustling but harrowing rise of English industry that made many people rich and many more people soot-covered beggars. Here, Gaskell stays more refined and less comical than Dickens; her poor are not grotesque caricatures, but hard and not always sympathetic people.

Margaret is a well-educated country girl, and her mother is a typical upper-class housewife. The Hales aren't used to these northerners who speak bluntly, tell you exactly what they think of you, ask personal questions, and talk openly about money.

Mostly we see Milton and its northern ways through Margaret's eyes, and Gaskell invokes some of the social issues of the time, as when a poor family Margaret befriends gets caught up in a millworkers' strike. At first, Mr. Thornton seems like your basic hard-hearted capitalist oppressing his workers, but Gaskell slowly draws out more nuanced arguments: Thornton is a hard, proud, mercenary man, but he's upright and honorable and he's earned his fortune the hard way. And the millworkers, while legitimately oppressed, are not exactly angels and they believe some really stupid things. The tone swings back and forth between pro-capitalist parochialism and a more humanitarian saga; Gaskell writes about economics and class warfare more convincingly than most of her peers. She doesn't have Dickens's sharp edge, but she isn't writing social satire.

Honestly, I could have done without the obligatory Jane Eyre-ish happy ending altogether. And Margaret Hale, while she certainly has a voice and a personality, was a little too simpering at times (though not as bad as Fanny Price). I thought the social issues and the secondary characters were more interesting than the Lovestruck Capitalist and the almost-perfect protagonist. This was a fine novel - I'm only dinging it a star because Gaskell's writing didn't quite stand out enough to distinguish it from all the other books I've been comparing it to.

Juliet Stevenson, who does many of these classic British novels, was fantastic in this one. She handled the male characters as adeptly as the females, and her accents were perfect: she spoke with the northern burr of the Milton characters, and the southern country accent of the Hales, making the different parts of England distinct.

47 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Melinda
  • 2009-10-10

Spectacular Narration

The story is a bit like a Jane Austen book, but with more social philosophy which was enlightening. And I have a weak spot for romance these days-- that was in there too, with the steadfast heroine etc. There was also a Christianity motif that would have been unbearable for me (an atheist) to read without being flung out of the story but above all of this, there is Juliet Stevenson who casts it all into perfect balance with astonishing skill. Cannot praise her enough.

44 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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  • connie
  • 2010-11-26

What a difference the narrator makes!

I previously listened to the Charton Griffin narrated version - and he was so wrong for the novel (the train whistles inserted between sections didn't help the listen either).

I gave the novel a second chance because this version was on sale - and am very glad that I did. It's some of Gaskill's better prose, and she did have a good grasp of the problems of industrialization as well as a good narrative in which to frame them.

40 people found this helpful

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  • EB
  • 2010-07-01

Great reading

This is one of my favorite books, and Juliet Stephenson does a great job reading it. She renders the thick northern dialect understandable, and gives character to all the voices. Loved it.

27 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Judith Seaboyer
  • 2010-04-06

Juliet Stevenson is miraculous!

The wonderful Juliet Stevenson reads this fine Victorian novel with superb skill and intelligence. If you have already read the book, her reading will bring new insights; if not, you are in for a rare treat.

21 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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  • Diane Walter
  • 2017-01-25

Gloom, gloom, gloom

I read several reviewers making analogies between this story and those of Jane Austen. I beg to differ. I found the emotions of the characters in this story lacking in the complexity of Austen's. They seemed shallow, histrionic, and unlikable. The story itself dragged on far too long in the beginning chapters and was far too gloomy, and then ended too abruptly at the end. It was like the author spent months or years writing the first part and then dashed off the end because her publisher was threatening to take back her advance. At least five characters died but I felt no shock, no sorrowbecause it was impossible to get emotionally attached to anyone in this tale. I would not consider reading another book by this author. The narrator was phenomenal, but she couldn't rescue a bad tale.

16 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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  • Tracet
  • 2012-12-02

I'll listen to anything Juliet Stevenson reads

Eighteen hours and eighteen minutes of this felt like so much longer, somehow. And has led to a review-or-whatever-you-want-to-call-this that seems almost as long … And ranty. That might make up for some of the length. And that's one of the reasons for my rating to be three stars instead of two – along with the fact that Juliet Stevenson's performance elevated it all, say whatever else I will say, the book did stir up emotions. Though perhaps not the emotions Miss Gaskell might have intended.

One of the quirks of my memory is that, while I know I saw the miniseries based on this book years ago, and I seem to remember liking it, I remember almost nothing about it. I know both book and film garnered effusive praise in the online community I belonged to at the time, which is why I ended up watching it, and why I spent that Audible credit on Juliet Stevenson's reading of the book. A current friend praises Ms. Stevenson to the skies – and she couldn't be more right, the performance is superb. Past and present friends praised the book to the skies… and … I … don't know.

I did some thinking about virgin goddesses, listening to this book. Depending on how you read her, Diana always was a bit of a bitchy prig; look at what happened to Medusa. Diana was a warrior, and there's no questioning her scornful courage, but while her insistence on retaining her virginity was a perfectly laudable intent, her actions in defense of it were sometimes a bit over the top, by modern eyes at least. Look at what happened to Actaeon.

Which brings me to Margaret. Her pride and her prejudices make any given Jane Austen character look absolutely logical and open-minded. She lowers herself to visit the poor and mortally ill Bessy Higgins – when she remembers – purely because she is guilted and shamed into it, and then after a while her interest is caught despite herself. Her self-centeredness and reluctance to lower herself by entering the poor Higgins home is countered only by a bold – slightly marvelous – reminder from Bessy that, eh, she never thought Margaret would show up anyhow; resignedly, Margaret determines that she will not allow this lower class girl to be able to crow over her. Afterward, she forgets to go as often as possible, or finds excuses not to. In another arena: when her first marriage proposal comes – poor mistaken fool that the man was – he was just lucky she didn't have Diana's powers or he would have suddenly been standing bewildered on four cloven hooves wondering why all those dogs were starting to drool. Her reactions to both men who dare - dare - to tell her their feelings are the same: outrage, scorn, offense. How could they ever dream of considering thinking of telling her they loved her? The cheek! The nerve! The effrontery!

For most of the book I was hoping and praying that Margaret would find herself a withered spinster at fifty, petting her cats and trying to convince herself that's the way she wanted it.

After only a few chapters, I was beginning to worry. I don't like these people – not just Margaret, almost all of them. My impression of Henry Lennox was very good – him I liked, and it seemed obvious to me that he loved Margaret. Her reaction? See above: contempt complete with a curled lip. I was revolted. She's a Victorian innocent, and unsettled by her first candidate for the role of lover – I get that. But rather than behave graciously, as I thought she was meant to do as a Victorian innocent, she squashes him like a bug. A really nasty bug. But she hopes they can still be friends. I wanted to slap her.

Then comes the upheaval at home. After a few semi-blissful days back in her country home, her father – who has been acting oddly – drops a bomb on her (and only on her): he is at odds with his church, and although he loves his work, loves his parish, loves his people, he cannot continue to serve them. The reasons for this are not explained – I suppose it is assumed that the reader will understand. I don't, and I never did have the chance to research the apparent schism. Without more information about what could cause such soul-searching, Hale comes off as a selfish, weak, pig-headed fool who injures the parish he supposedly loves by abruptly leaving it to someone else, and who injures his family by the manner in which he does so. His wife is a discontented self-centered annoyance, and he – apparently terrified at setting off a hellstorm – shirks the duty of telling her of his decision for weeks. I waited. I had a feeling I knew what was coming.

Hale has dragged his wife to a country parsonage where she is miserable, but he is happy and does good work. I'm not going to denigrate his reasons for not being able to continue – I don't know enough about the situation, so while it looks like a very poor decision to me – he won't be doing himself, his family, his cause, or his parishioners any good by up and leaving – it might be morally sound. Whatever the situation, he does everything in the most frustratingly, infuriatingly sheepishly underhanded manner. If he had said "I'm the man of the house, this is my decision, I have no choice within the scope of my conscience, I'm sorry if it inconveniences you but if you love me I hope you will support my decision" – that would have been manly. This … this is like a five year old who tells a fib about how that vase got broken, and then develops a fever from the guilt and scares the household half to death before finally tearfully confessing. He goes about writing letters and arranging his resignation and securing a replacement, all the while moping about the house taking up dramatic poses of despair without telling anyone why. By the time he finally pulls Margaret aside and spills it, it feels like one of those scenes of a drama queen drooping about with the back of her hand pressed to her forehead, sighing tremulous sighs, trying to force someone to ask her whatever's wrong – and no one does, so she's finally driven to just come out with it.

During the conversation with Margaret, he evades the subject of her mother until she finally corners him into revealing that … well… no, he hasn't told her. He's been making all these plans for weeks now and hasn't told her. Was he waiting for her to rise to his bait and ask him? She's at least as self-centered as he is, so there was never a chance of that; my impression of her is that if someone were to come to her bleeding from a head wound she would get upset about the stains on the carpet, and then faint and expect to be tended to first. Regardless, he hasn't told her – and I waited. And finally, there it was: "If I tell you all, perhaps you could break it to her tomorrow?" And Margaret's response? Should have been "Oh, no. Not a chance, mister. You should have told her – never mind me – ages ago, and you're gonna suck it up and go tell her right this second. This is your mess – you deal with it." But no.

The weakness of the man, and the passive strength of the girl – because she has no choice. She *can't* say no, or he'll – sadly – think less of her as a daughter – and, worse, she'll suffer pangs of guilt for ages thinking of herself as a bad daughter. It's ludicrous.

"They were at the lowest now; they could not be worse." – Margaret, pondering on their situation after their move.

What a disgusting line. How dare she think so? I suppose there's irony in the sentence, because things certainly will get worse for them, but to be surrounded by the poor, who are as likely to starve to death as not, and – far from realizing how well off they themselves are in comparison – to count the presence of those poor as part of why their own situation has degraded… Thoroughly ugly and distasteful.

I just did not like any of these people. JohnThornton is the closest – he seems open, honest, straightforward – but he has his prejudices and harshnesses. He is one of the only ones I can find any respect for - and even he goes completely unreasonable and hard-headed about his employees, insisting that an employer must be a dictator, and ignorance is the best state for a worker - i.e., a stupid worker is a docile worker. I simply do not find him likeable overall.

Mr. Hale is impossible. He has no backbone whatsoever – he makes Kleenex look strong and upstanding.

As the tale wore on, I began to feel some sympathy for Mrs. Hale, but she was still too vain and ridiculous to really warm up to, and every time I started to she waxed selfish and stupid again and I wanted to smother her with her own lace-lined pillows. 'Why, I should not be ill—be dying—if he had not taken me away from Helstone, to this unhealthy, smoky, sunless place.' What a hideous, lingeringly painful thing to say. Then there's the whole state of affairs regarding Frederick, Margaret's brother. He was part of a (perfectly righteous, of course) mutiny, and is now living far away under another name because of a very real danger that the authorities will catch up to him and hang him. But his mother wants to see him. Now. 'I charge you, Margaret, as you yourself hope for comfort in your last illness, bring him to me that I may bless him. Only for five minutes, Margaret. There could be no danger in five minutes. Oh, Margaret, let me see him before I die!' An hour later: 'Oh, Margaret, I'm so afraid of his coming! If he should be recognised! If he should be taken! If he should be executed, after all these years that he has kept away and lived in safety! I keep falling asleep and dreaming that he is caught and being tried.' Stupid cow. Half killing your husband with guilt isn't bad enough, but now trying to get your son killed, then heaping guilt upon your daughter's head for doing exactly what you told her to do. Stupid, selfish, disgusting cow.

Other characters: Bessy Higgins I liked somewhat, but she is a bit of a scary fanatic who threatens at one point to kill Margaret and has an unhealthy fixation on the Book of Revelation; her sister Mary is a cardboard cutout only serving to be clumsy and timid and make Bessy look better; their father might be a good man – he tries, with the strike – and I liked him in some scenes as well, but he can't stay away from the bottle, and he's hard. Martha is an auld harridan, Fanny is one to love to hate, Mrs. Thornton was possibly the most likeable and sympathetic, in an odd love-to-read-about-you-wouldn't-want-to-know-you sort of way, and … I liked Henry Lennox, dammit.

How do I feel about Margaret? Let me put it this way. My maternal grandmother's name was Margaret. It disgusts me that this creature shares her name. I kept wanting to like Margaret, and then her lip would curl again for some reason or other, or she'd forget about Bessie again, and I was back to wanting to slap her. She is a prig and a ludicrous snob, and not terribly bright, and can be outright vicious.

"She, who had hitherto felt that even the most refined remark on her personal appearance was an impertinence, had to endure undisguised admiration from these outspoken men." "These outspoken men" weren't wolf-whistling, or propositioning her, or commenting on her breasts, or anything I would expect to be called "impertinent". No. They were, rather gallantly I thought, giving her genuine compliments. Someone, quickly, call the police.

"Margaret thought she had seen the face of one of them before, and returned him a proud look of offended dignity for his somewhat impertinent stare of undisguised admiration." But see, if no one ever looked at her or found her attractive I expect she would be offended about that, too.

It's odd, because I'd swear that at some point at least one character (undoubtedly female) dismisses Margaret's looks as not beautiful but distinctive – yet she is constantly, and I do mean constantly, praised as just stunning. It did not take long for me to weary of all the compliments lavished on Margaret – not by her father or mother or her unlucky swains, but by the narrative voice. "Sweet" and "sunny" and "stately" and "elegant" … There was one lengthy description of her more than midway through – which I can't find now – which raised both my eyebrows. It's another place where I questioned whether Gaskell was injecting irony, but doesn't seem to be… "She was so gentle and ladylike in her mode of reception that her visitor was somewhat daunted". Wha - ? Since when is haughtiness and disdain and a quick temper part of the definition of "gentle" OR "ladylike"? It baffled me that this sort of thing: "her lips, moving so slightly as she spoke, not breaking the cold serene look of her face with any variation from the one lovely haughty curve" – was presented as if to say "isn't she wonderful??? Because – no. Cold may go hand in hand with serene, but it's not a great pairing; if "haughty" is "lovely" then it's not the kind of lovely that's admirable. It's just absurd. Her "sweet patience" and "sweet forbearance" and yet still "her regal composure"… She's cold. She's sweet. She's sunny. She's haughty. She's patient and contemptuous and regal and – wait. She's wonderful no matter what and everyone comes to love her – even Mrs. Thornton comes to respect her … the narrator adores her …

Margaret is a Mary Sue.

That goes a long ways toward explaining my loathing of her.

I feel a little stupid that I can't tell if Elizabeth Gaskell means it or is being ironic or sarcastic when she speaks of Mr. Hale being a kindly and big-hearted gentleman, and when she describes Margaret as "sweet" despite all evidence to the contrary; one of the very last adjectives I would ever assign to Margaret is "sweet". I can't tell if the depiction of Margaret as largely inconsequential among her aunt's circle yet so astoundingly snobbish in Milton is meant to be social commentary. I hope so. I do hope so.

But there doesn't seem to be any of that. I don't know if it's having a 2012 perspective on a book published in 1855, but … bleh.

Elizabeth Gaskell's skill as a writer is, for me, in this, wildly erratic. On one (virtual) page she will present me with a bit of business I can't help but enjoy – and then a few minutes later I'll be rolling my eyes again.

Speaking of eyes, this is a partial list of how Margaret's eyes are described (thank you, Project Gutenberg):
- her large soft eyes
- the pure serenity of those eyes
- her large grave eyes
- her beautiful eyes
- yo'r clear steadfast eyes
- yo'r deep comforting eyes
- the large soft eyes that looked forth steadily at one object
- those beautiful eyes
- her deep, serious eyes
- Her grave sweet eyes

I'm sure there's more. It was just hilarious after a while. I know: Victorian. Still.

Other problems I had with the writing, in terms of pacing and plot: There is immense buildup to Frederick's coming, and then to his first meeting with his mother – and then it's skipped over, and he's gone in a minute. There is buildup to Bessy's death – and we hear about it after the fact. Then it's pretty much over, and Margaret certainly doesn't go to the funeral.

In reading people's reviews of books from other eras, I tend to become annoyed with complaints about what are now seen as completely wrong-headed mindsets. Prejudices, discrimination, particularly chauvinism, use of words which are now verboten – it's baffled me in the past, because if a book is about another time period – much less written in another time period – the characters in it cannot be expected to embrace Equal Rights and Women's Lib and so on.

Suddenly, though, with this book I'm feeling exactly what I've criticized others for expressing.

The casual racism – I put a quote in the updates somewhere – and rampant elitism were ugly and pervasive. Basically, anyone who was not exactly like or higher in rank than Margaret was worth only contempt until proven otherwise. The Irish, the poor, the country folk of Helstone and the city folk of Helstone, people in other walks of life who don't try to better themselves and those who do – everyone. It was just awful that Margaret had to be subjected to living among these inferior beings.

However I feel about the book, I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the narration. It was wonderful. Juliet Stevenson uses breath and silence and pause like no other narrator I've come across yet. It's exquisite. And her characterizations were perfect. I can still hear the lines I've quoted above – especially Mrs. Hale moaning Margaret's name – in Juliet Stevenson's voice; I can't imagine how much more I would have disliked these characters if I hadn't been enjoying the reading so much. Oh – one thing I particularly enjoyed was that Mrs. Thornton's voice was made deeper than John's. I thought it was perfect. Accents were wonderful, tones were perfectly suited to the characters, I loved everything about the read. Ms. Stevenson officially became one of the narrators I will follow anywhere: I'll listen to anything as long as it's in her voice.

Even Elizabeth Gaskell.

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  • 🌸DARA
  • 2013-06-06

Wonderful!

I think one word says it all "wonderful". I can't add much more to that!!

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  • E. Valabregue
  • 2021-08-22

wonderfully read by Juliet Stevenson

i really enjoyed this listening. Juliet.s voices are fantastic.i recommand the audio book, far better than readong it oneself.