England, England

A Novel

By: Julian Barnes

Narrated by: Judy Geeson

What would happen if a tycoon decided to turn England into a theme park? Before anyone can say "Windsor Castle," replicas of all of the kingdom's great landmarks—from the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey to the National Gallery and everything in between—all turn up in one place. And what if credit-worthy tourists could escape to this island that permits vast expense accounts and prohibits paparazzi? Here is a "wickedly funny" (The New York Times) tale about an idyllic land of make-believe in England that gets horribly and hilariously out of hand.

©1999 Julian Barnes (P)1999 Phoenix Books, Inc.

Good Book, Not-so-good Audiobook.

The story itself is good. It's interesting and poignant, a little weird, but it has some human universals that anyone can connect to. It's painfully literary in a lot of ways—"progressive" male author "explores" female sexuality with a female main character who likes sex, the narrative uses "fuck" a lot, etc.

This audio recorded, though, is pretty bad. The performer does not pause when the chapter is over. It makes this book really quite useless for a student—which I am—who needs to read a certain number of chapters by a certain date. The chapters it's divided into are different from the book, so that's useless. In the audiobook, I'm on Chapter Six, but in the actual book, I'm on Chapter Two. It's somewhat infuriating. The recording itself is poor quality and a little painful with headphones. The use of voices for different characters is okay, and the tone the performer uses is alright. The quality and lack of chapter divisions are the real problems that made really took away from the experience of this audiobook.

This is abridged!

It was not clear from the description that this was the case, and I would not have purchased it had I known. (Also the sound quality of the recording was muffled.)

Good, but not his best

Very good but, pace the Booker judges, not Barnes's best. The "big idea" is interesting but the central plot is a bit too big, and broad comedy is not his forte. The protagonist's inner life, with hints of religious sensibility, is more interesting. The narrator hams characterizations and, unlike other female narrators, was frequently hard for me to understand in the car

Not for the Average Yank

Unless you're a complete Anglophile, knowlegeable with Brittish slang, colloquialism, geography, culture, and comedic nuance, you will have a difficult time getting into this story. Half the time, I had no idea what they were talking about and I consider myself to be well above the literacy line. I could not force myself to hear more than two hours worth and that's rare for me since I love audiobooks. I found the narration one-dimensional and the voice of the narrator seemed to be a monotone.

Loved the narration but it skips some sections

The narration was great. But if you’re following along with the book be alert for several missing sections. It sometimes skipped two sections at a time.