The Return of the Native

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The Return of the Native

Auteur(s): Thomas Hardy

Narrateur(s): Alan Rickman

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À propos de cet audio

Earphones Award Winner (AudioFile Magazine)

Exclusively from Audible

Set on Egdon Heath, a fictional barren moor in Wessex, Eustacia Vye longs for the excitement of city life but is cut off from the world in her grandfather's lonely cottage. Clym Yeobright who has returned to the area to become a schoolmaster seems to offer everything she dreams of: passion, excitement and the opportunity to escape. However, Clym's ambitions are quite different from hers, and marriage only increases Eustacia's destructive restlessness, drawing others into a tangled web of deceit and unhappiness.

Considered a truly modern story due to its sexual politics and hindered desires it still holds relevance to audiences today. There is a tension between the symbolic setting of the heath and the modernity of the characters that makes the listener question our freedom to shape our lives as we wish. Are we always able to live our dreams?

Like George Eliot, Hardy was a Victorian realist whose novels and poetry were greatly influenced by Romanticism, especially the poet William Wordsworth. His critical thoughts on Victorian society can be seen throughout much of his work.

Narrator Biography

Multi-award winning actor and director Alan Rickman, famous for roles such as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films and the Sherriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), had a varied career that included performing on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company in modern and classical theatre productions. In America, he gained recognition for his Broadway appearance in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1985) and later his role in Die Hard (1988) made him internationally famous. Other notable performances included his 2001 return to the West End and Broadway in Noël Coward's Private Lives and Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman in 2010. Rickman is most remembered for his roles in films such as Love Actually (2003) and Sweeney Todd (2007) as well as voicing Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), and Absalom the Caterpillar in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010).

Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Classiques

Fiction de genre

Fiction littéraire

Fiction

Théâtre

Inspirant

Célébrité

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Ce que les critiques en disent

"Rickman's voice is masculine and seductive; yet by altering tempo, modulating tone, he becomes Hardy's women and children, utterly compelling as he projects all ranges of emotion. His individualizing dialogue of the human-sized characters, that country chorus who form the backdrop of normality for Hardy's titanic lovers, is brilliant." ( AudioFile)

Les plus pertinents

I felt a return, in my mind, to the entirely memorable experiences of my childhood when I listened in rapt attention to my mom reading stories to me and my siblings. We could not ever wait for the next chapter and the next to be read to us. This performance from the great Alan Rickman, which was nothing short of perfection, drew this childlike desire out of me! I couldn’t wait to hear more. His tone and diction of every word held my attention for the entirety of the book. I wanted it to go on and not come to the end.
The story, in and of itself, was not one that I would recommend to other readers, as the language and plot are severely outdated and rather shallow. But to hear it read in Alan Rickman’s voice elevates the story to such a place that from this point on, I will always recall the minute details as well as the characters names and lives due to the sheer enjoyment of his narration. It was Alan Rickman that turned this Victorian drivel into warm syrup on pancakes!