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Redburn
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
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Publisher's summary
Drawn from Melville's own adolescent experience aboard a merchant ship, Redburn charts the coming-of-age of Wellingborough Redburn, a young innocent who embarks on a crossing to Liverpool together with a roguish crew. Once in Liverpool, Redburn encounters the squalid conditions of the city and meets Harry Bolton, a bereft and damaged soul, who takes him on a tour of London that includes a scene of rococo decadence unlike anything else in Melvilles fiction. Redburn is not a document; it is a work of art by the unexpected genius of a sailor, Herman Melville.
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With few other choices left open, young Wellingborough Redburn signs on the Highlander, a merchant ship leaving New York City for England. Narrator Kirby Heyborne's youthful, easy performance expresses the intrepid Redburn's thoughts with charm and sympathy as he finds out that life at sea isn't what he'd naively expected. Heyborne, who has received numerous AudioFile Earphone Awards, as well as the Odyssey Award, describes Redburn's difficulties on the ship with dismay and resignation, and he intensifies the shock when the boy arrives in Liverpool and witnesses the corruption, desperation, and poverty there. As Redburn returns to New York, listeners will hear his new-found maturity in Heyborne's sober narration.
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- By: Robert Louis Stevenson
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Young Jim Hawkins quiet life as the son of an innkeeper changes when an ancient sailor takes up lodging at the inn. When the old man dies without paying his bill, Jim must search the sailor's one possession, a large sea-chest, for payment. He finds a map that is the key to a fortune. This commences a Caribbean treasure hunt, with pirate Long John Silver only steps behind!
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Truly a pleasure to listen too.
- By Richard on 09-04-03
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Dombey and Son
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In this carefully crafted novel, Dickens reveals the complexity of London society in the enterprising 1840s as he takes the listener into the business firm and home of one of its most representative patriarchs, Paul Dombey.
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Perfect pair
- By Philip on 03-25-08
By: Charles Dickens
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A Beautiful Blue Death
- Charles Lenox Mysteries Series #1
- By: Charles Finch
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Charles Lenox, Victorian gentleman and armchair explorer, likes nothing more than to relax in his private study with a cup of tea, a roaring fire and a good book. But when his lifelong friend Lady Jane asks for his help, Lenox cannot resist the chance to unravel a mystery. Prudence Smith, one of Jane's former servants, is dead of an apparent suicide. But Lenox suspects something far more sinister: murder, by a rare and deadly poison.
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I like cozy
- By Sheryl on 05-21-12
By: Charles Finch
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Sea of Poppies
- Ibis Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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At the heart of this vibrant saga is an immense ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its purpose to fight China's vicious 19th-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.
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ignorance may be bliss
- By Evelyn M Kloepper on 07-27-09
By: Amitav Ghosh
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The Sea Wolf
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
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Jack London worshiped strong and virtuous heroes, and his stories give great weight to the inevitable triumph of good over evil. His telling of the adventures of Humphrey van Weydon in The Sea Wolf is in keeping with this theme of moral man. His powerful and gripping saga of van Weydon's capture by a seal-hunting ship and the ensuing tangles with its dreaded captain, Wolf Larsen, makes this a classic American tale of peril and victory.
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I won the lottery!
- By Bill on 08-11-17
By: Jack London
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Mutiny on the Bounty
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Michael Carman
- Length: 22 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before. Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave.
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You don't know the whole story.
- By Justin Sluyter on 05-01-19
By: Peter FitzSimons
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Offshore
- By: Penelope Fitzgerald, Stephanie Racine, Alan Hollinghurst - introduction
- Narrated by: Jot Davies, Alan Hollinghurst
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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On Battersea Reach, a mixed bag of the temporarily lost and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the tide of the Thames. There is good-natured Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by chance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, an ex-navy man whose boat, much like its owner, dominates the Reach.
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S.O.S
- By SB on 03-26-22
By: Penelope Fitzgerald, and others
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Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates
- By: Mary Mapes Dodge
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Can young Hans Brinker win the silver skates that are the only hope of saving his family from ruin? Hans and his little sister Gretel live in Holland, a colorful and exciting country of windmills and great canals. Unfortunately, the Brinkers are very poor and their father is ill, and Hans wonders whether they'll survive the long, harsh winter. Then he finds out about an ice skating race, and the prize - a pair of shiny silver skates - that might help his family survive.
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Entertaining except for the digressions
- By Ellen Spertus on 03-13-03
By: Mary Mapes Dodge
What listeners say about Redburn
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Skeeterbait
- 03-22-24
Classic Tale of Adventure … & Social Disparities
This is a fantastic adventure of a kid with wanderlust in 1839. However, Melville’s style of writing in that period which shifted from third to first person is strange by contemporary standards. His reflection on the plight of the world’s poor, including Irish immigrants that he witnessed suffering in steerage just a few few years before the potato famine, revealed the disdainful chasm between the rich & penniless in the mid 19th century.
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- Darwin8u
- 09-06-13
A funky autobiographical novel/bildungsroman
It must be awful as a writer to dash off a novel for money or tobacco in a couple of weeks and have it praised, but see your earlier serious novel (Mardi) panned, and your later novel (Moby-Dick) under-appreciated until years after your death. That is the genius of a select group of writers -- they are destined to exist in this weird space between art and the public. Perhaps the strong bitter of Melville's art was just too early and too strange for the public, but they WERE ready for his swipes.
If you are into literature of the sea (The Sea Wolf, The Pilot, Captains Courageous, etc.,) or you are just into Melville, you will want to read this. If, however, this is your first Melville, I'd stick with Moby-Dick.
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13 people found this helpful
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- John L. Murphy
- 03-18-17
A leisurely if perplexing voyage
What did you like best about Redburn? What did you like least?
I liked the hints of the themes Melville would elaborate in Moby Dick. The start was promising, if heavily "based on a true story" and I presume heavily autobiographical. The Famine emigrants in Liverpool and at sea gain some attention, perhaps notable in fiction. But I disliked the "Harry" diversion and the latter part of the story weakened the plot. It reminded me of how Huck Finn also falls apart after a strong start, a few decades later.
If you’ve listened to books by Herman Melville before, how does this one compare?
I have not heard any (yet).
What aspect of Kirby Heyborne’s performance would you have changed?
I liked Kirby Heyborne dramatizing David Mitchell's own "heavily autobiographical" coming-of-age "Black Swan Green." So I purchased this on that strength. But Kirby H. mispronounces hillocks, shillelagh, Lothario, Hecate, indefatigable, and over and over tarpaulin, to name but a few words he surely should have known, or checked. My rating reflects this shortcoming.
Was Redburn worth the listening time?
It unfolds more slowly than any other audiobook I can recall outside of, say, the dense Thomas Sowell treatise on Marxism. Not unpleasant, and I fell asleep (with the timer) many nights as I listened to segments. Melville does put you at sea with him vividly. Despite the clunky plot, this is mostly worthwhile. I assume it's not the highest-ranked among his canon.
Any additional comments?
It's a strain to hear the perorations to Carlo the Italian organ-grinder boy (yes, that's him) as well as the paeans to the "girlish figure" of the narrator's pal and bosum (?) buddy Harry. Their relationship and his backstory are occluded, but scholars now must have devoted feverish scrutiny to what Melville's alluding to. But the novel "goes south" and never returns.
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1 person found this helpful