The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Rob Goll, Amanda Friday

The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain: A Fancy for Christmas-Time published in 1848, is the fifth and final book in Charles Dickens' series of "Christmas Books," five novellas with strong social and moral messages that he published during the 1840s. It is preceded by A Christmas Carol (1843) The Chimes (1844) and The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) and The Battle of Life (1846)

Mr. Redlaw is a chemistry professor tormented by painful memories of the sorrow, wrong, and trouble he has suffered in his life. On Christmas Eve, he is visited by a phantom, the double of himself, who offers him the gift of forgetting these painful memories. The catch is that others who come into contact with the professor will also lose the remembrance of their past hurts and sorrows. Redlaw is hesitant at first but, believing his life will be better and happier, he accepts the ghost's bargain.

Public Domain (P)2022 Amanda Friday, Rob Goll

great story poorly executed narration

This is a wonderful story. Very engaging. Because of when it was written you definitely have to give it a chance to get past some of the initial description that today's reader often would rather do without, but a great story. Rob Golll is an excellent narrator and I think this book would be much better if the narration were simply handled by him. Unfortunately, the addition of Amanda Friday becomes rather annoying. It's particularly annoying when she narrates the child's voice. I don't think I've ever heard such an annoying voice in a book I was listening to. I think using different voices for different people can work when you have different narrators but it really doesn't work when you have one narrator doing pretty much everything and then someone else chiming in sporadically simply doing individual voices here and there. And frankly, the way that Amanda Friday performs some of the voices is so incredibly annoying it becomes harder and harder to listen to a story that is excellent. I kept finding myself wishing that all the narration was done by Rob Goll and eventually I just turned it off and downloaded a copy of the book that I could read. What a shame.