
Jane and Prudence
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $17.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Mary Sarah
-
By:
-
Barbara Pym
The author of Excellent Women explores female friendship and the quiet yearnings of British middle-class life - a literary delight for fans of Jane Austen.
Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were close friends at Oxford University, but now live very different lives. Forty-one-year-old Jane lives in the country, is married to a vicar, has a daughter she adores, and lives a very proper life in a very proper English parish. Prudence, a year shy of 30, lives in London, has an office job, and is self-sufficient and fiercely independent - until Jane decides her friend should be married. Jane has the perfect husband in mind for her former pupil: a widower named Fabian Driver.
But there are other women vying for Fabian's attention. And Pru is nursing her own highly inappropriate desire for her older, married, and seemingly oblivious employer, Dr. Grampian. What follows is a witty, delightful, trenchant story of manners, morals, family, and female bonding that redefines the social novel for a new generation.
©1981 The Estate of Barbara Pym (P)2020 TantorListeners also enjoyed...




















People who viewed this also viewed...


















Narrator is unbearable! Fake English accent. Ugh!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
EXCELLENT
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
If you can handle the lamentable narration, I do recommend the book - it is funny and bittersweet, just what I'd hoped for.
Lovely story, lackluster narrator
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
She reads in such a languid drawl that I kept expecting a yawn, and this disengagement robbed each character of their distinctive voice, rendering all as an homogeneous monotany of indistinct uniformity floating through scenes in a qualude haze. Barbara Pym writes sublime dialogue saturated with nuance, complexity and subtle wit, which devastatingly was rendered mute by this reader's apparent indifference.
This is the most damning of my observations and was enough to consign this audio book to my reject pile. However, I am put off enough by one more thing that I must mention, though I admit readily I may be incorrect. After all, I am American, not British. But although I cannot know this for sure I suspect this reader does not possess a genuine British accent, rather has 'cultivated' one for the purpose of performance. There is something so odd about her cadence and pronunciation that I can only attribute it to this possibility.
Anyway, audio quality was good, no glaringly mispronounced words, and if you can get past the reader's lack luster and slightly smug sounding voice the content is beyond reproach. So 3 stars.
If you've purchased this book content yourself with knowing it might be good as background noise to put your infant or a pet to sleep.
Wonderful writing woefully narrated
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I ended up getting a physical copy of this book instead, but I did listen to a bit of this on fastforward. Unfortunately the enunciation isn't good enough to understand past 1.75 or so, but I do think increasing speed improves things immensely.
The book itself is immensely beautiful and very witty.
Barbara Pym is one of the greate
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The narrator was terrible. She has an affect that she probably considers “whimsical,” but it is irritating and it trivializes the work. Unfortunate.
Delightful story, terrible narrator
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Audible, please re-record these novels with a worthy narrator, perhaps Jayne Entwistle, who did a fine job with Excellent Women, or the incomparable Juliet Stevenson. Barbara Pym's many devoted fans will then line up to purchase them!
Charming Story Ruined by Terrible Narration
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Delicious
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Strange accent
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Originally, I was quite generous writing that "...Jane Doggett should have had a gruffer voice. I am bit spoiled by the old UK recording, though, by Sterling Audio (Eileen Aitkins)..." but the truth is, the narrator really delivers an unsuitable performance. I have to turn the volume way up, for one thing. A really grand narrator will absorb you completely in the story...you might once in a while think, "wow, what a great narrator!" but you are not focused on it, you are immersed in the story itself. This is not the case here, and she pointedly draws extra attention to herself with utterly bizarre chapter announcements. I love Pym so much that I re-listened, but next time, will pick up my old paperback. Note: have listened again to the recording and making a valiant effort to not focus on the narrator. It gets more bearable with repeated re-listenings, as I am doing with all the Pyms that Audible stocks.
Nuanced and superb insight...lovely English lit
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.