i loved it

I really enjoyed this reading - the narrators' camellion voice captures the various characters tones imaginetively and distinctively. The novel is a tale of love, of history, of woe and immorality. There is no true hero to the story, but nonetheless leaves the listener enamoroured with anthony and gloria's helplessness and deterioration. You hate them for their snobbery, idolize their lavishness, balame them for their fate, and pity them for their eventual destruction.

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17 people found this helpful

Thick description of ennui

Fitzgerald's ability to describe the tedium of life is outstanding. This is thick description at it's best. Fitzgerald's novel gives the reader a semiautobiographical account of madness with a style that reveals what most of us would not see in the course of everyday life. He allows me the pleasure of reading with a knowing smile the plight of people struggling to "have fun". He does not miss a thing. The desciption is so good and so thick at times I felt the tedium myself and needed to read something else as a break. You return to the book as a moth to a flame.

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15 people found this helpful

Every bit as good as Gatsby

So excellent. I read this book years ago, but didn't think what I now realize: It is every bit as good as the great American novel (and social commentary) we have in Gatsby.

At first I was unsure of the reader William Dufris because his voices were not the ones I had in my head, especially for Gloria. But eventually I gave myself over to his version and found them brilliant, even down to giving her a midwestern flavor.

The one thing I did find grating was the shrill little kid screeching "Audible for Kids." Please remove that from the audio. Not to mention that this novel is not "for kids."

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12 people found this helpful

What a difference a great reader makes

I'd tried to listen to this book from a different reader once before - couldn't get through the first few chapters as a result, and I just recall hating the book as a result. So I gave it another try with this new reader. Dufris has some odd voices, but the Anthony Patch character, and his acting through this complex part, really made Fitzgerald's prose sing. I am new to Fitzgerald, recently having read new bios on Zelda, so I've been more keenly interested in his works. Dufris seemed to be in tune with the characters, flow, style that Fitzgerald imbued his piece with. Great book, great performance, worth the time. Entertaining.

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11 people found this helpful

Surprisingly good narration

It's tough to capture all of Fitzgerald's nuances, especially in this novel, his second book (the one before Gatsby), but this narrator does it. This book contains some of Fitzgerald's finest conversational dialogue, and you can really feel Fitzgerald's relationship with Zelda, who was only about 22 at the time of writing.

The beginning also really captures a few elements of Fitzgerald's childhood (better profiled in This Side of Paradise). For any serious scholar of the '20s, this is a must-read, and big fans of Gatsby will not be dissapointed, especially at the intimate explorations of Fitzgerald's relationships, and the birth of post-modern conversation.

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8 people found this helpful

Not a favorite of mine

This is not the Great Gatsby, which is an engrossing and timeless novel. This one by Fitzgerald did not hold my attention as well, and I found it a bit tedious. This is a story about irresponsible party-goers with alcoholism problems. I plodded through the novel, with many parts quite enjoyable. The reader is excellent. As a New Yorker, I did enjoy the depiction of New York life in the 1910's. It is recognizable as a modern New York City, although obviously much has changed. Much earlier than that (say, Edith Wharton's House of Mirth) and it feels like a different time.

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6 people found this helpful

Wonderful

William Dufris gives a wonderful, and to my mind almost perfect, reading of this tragic, and to my mind almost perfect, novel by F Scott Fitzgerald. Every character has a distinctive voice, and coming to the recording as I did with no prior knowledge of the novel, each voice seemed to fit like a glove.

The style of the novel is similar to that of This Side of Paradise. There is a mixture of straight narrative with scripted dialogue, the narrative switching point of view and going from past to present tense as the story requires. The dialogue is razor sharp and utterly convincing.

Is it autobiographical? I don't know enough about Fitzgerald to say. It seems to me it would be hard for someone to consume the gargantuan quantities of alcohol described in the book and still be able to create a work of art of such depth.

I took the novel on as an “assignment” (I often give myself reading assignments), but I found myself captivated by the characters and the world they were trying to inhabit - and by William Dufris’ voice.

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5 people found this helpful

life of leisure is stressful!

I'd read "the Great Gatsby " but nothing else that F Scott Fitzgerald had written. Different story but a similar theme...money doesn't make you happy.

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3 people found this helpful

Interesting story - not a great narrator

Where does The Beautiful and Damned rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I don't listen to very much fiction, so it's kind of hard to compare, but I enjoyed it.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Beautiful and Damned?

I don't want to give away the plot.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

He tries to make the characters distinguishable, but uses cartoonish, exaggerated tones and accents. Some do not make sense, like a deep south uneducated accent in a crowd of people that are mostly supposed to have gone to an elite school together. Poor characterization of Gloria, who he makes sound stupid while the text says something about how most men she met were her intellectual inferiors or something to that effect. She is immature, but she is not stupid. She is also carrying a heavy burden in the relationship in the story and the vocal interpretation of her dialogue minimizes that while Fitzgerald draws attention to it. He loses the nuance of Fitzgerald, which is the thing I chose the book for.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes.

Any additional comments?

I wish I had listened to the samples for the best narration.

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3 people found this helpful

You're buying a name

I've made it a point to read Scott Fitzgerald's earlier works and, while I found This Side of Paradise somewhat interesting, Beautiful and Damned is flat out boring. It reminds me of "The Good Life," by Jay Mcinerny, (Who has been compared to Fitz before)- where it inserts you into the boring lives of people with too much money, too much alcohol, and not much interesting to say. I think this might have been exciting 80 years ago. Fitz didn't really perfect his art until Great Gatsby. While 'Paradise,' is still somewhat entertaining for nostalgia sake, they should let this one go out of print. I've read some of the other reviews and I don't know how anyone managed to care about any of the cardboard characters. If it was written by a less-famous author, no one on here would have given it a read in the first place. Only the name brand made anyone 'pretend' to like it.

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3 people found this helpful