The Good Soldier
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Narrated by:
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Ralph Cosham
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By:
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Ford Madox Ford
About this listen
The Good Soldier is a story about the complex social and sexual relationships between two couples - one English, one American - and the growing awareness of American narrator John Dowell of the intrigues and passions behind their orderly Edwardian façade. It is Dowell’s attitude - his puzzlement, uncertainty, and the seemingly haphazard manner of his narration - that makes the book so powerful and mysterious. In Ford’s brilliantly woven tale, nothing is quite what it seems.
Despite its catalog of death, insanity, and despair, this novel has many comic moments and has inspired the work of several distinguished writers, including Graham Greene. Originally published in 1915, The Good Soldier is considered by many to be Ford Madox Ford’s masterpiece.
Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939) was a novelist, poet, literary critic, editor, and one of the founding fathers of English Modernism. He published over seventy books in his lifetime, perhaps most famously The Good Soldier. His books often centered on the conflict between traditional British values and those of the modern industrial society.
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Howards End
- By: E. M. Forster
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Howards End is a beautifully subtle tale of two very different families brought together by an unusual event. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger". When the elder Mrs. Wilcox dies and her family discovers she has left their country home - Howards End - to one of the Schlegel sisters, a crisis between the two families is precipitated that takes years to resolve.
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Fantastic Narration in Delightful Story
- By Wren on 05-05-18
By: E. M. Forster
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The Best Ghost Stories Ever Told
- Best Stories Ever Told
- By: Stephen Brennan - editor
- Narrated by: J. M. Badger, Imelda Pot
- Length: 24 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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A big, brilliant, spooky collection of classic and contemporary ghost stories that will make you hesitate before turning off that light.
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A very mixed review
- By Michael Mayer on 08-05-15
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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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North and South
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Written at the request of Charles Dickens, North and South is a book about rebellion that poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Gaskell expertly blends individual feeling with social concern and her heroine, Margaret Hale, is one of the most original creations of Victorian literature. When Margaret Hale's father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience she is forced to leave her comfortable home in the tranquil countryside of Hampshire....
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Delightful
- By Sally on 01-04-10
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Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
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Best Audible book ever
- By Molly-o on 12-25-11
By: George Eliot
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Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: David Horovitch
- Length: 38 hrs
- Unabridged
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Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky.
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Beautiful story, amazing narration
- By Marcus Vorwaller on 08-02-08
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Cranford
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Prunella Scales
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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A vivid and affectionate portrait of the residents of an English country town in the mid-19th century, Cranford describes a community dominated by its independent and refined women, relating the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances. Through a series of satirical vignettes, Gaskell sympathetically portrays changing small town customs and values in mid-Victorian England....
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Quietly, subtly sweet and heartwarming
- By T. on 03-26-12
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Anna Karenina
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Nikolay Trifilov
- Length: 43 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Znamenityj roman vvodit nas v bogatyj, raznoobraznyj, udivitel'no uyutnyj i privlekatel'nyj mir russkoj dvoryanskoj zhizni Moskvy i Peterburga. Tolstoj vystupaet zdes' pevcom povsednevnoj zhizni, kotoruyu on poehtiziruet i v kotoroj vidit filosofskuyu glubinu, primiryayushchuyu stol' razitel'nye protivopolozhnosti, kak tragicheskaya nezakonnaya svyaz' Anny Kareninoj s Vronskim i schastlivaya semejnaya zhizn' Kiti s Cherbackoj i Levina.
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Fantastic narration!
- By Anastasia Lattanand on 03-10-16
By: Leo Tolstoy
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The Forsyte Chronicles, Vol. 2
- A Modern Comedy
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 34 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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John Galsworthy's magnificent trilogy of power and passion chronicles the wealthy Forsyte family. The complete Chronicles are divided into three volumes, containing nine books and four interludes in total. Volume 2, A Modern Comedy, focuses on Soames's vivacious daughter, Fleur. Soames tries constantly to protect her but is baffled by the carefree attitudes in post-war London. Fleur and her husband Michael Mont host society gatherings, but her previous affair with Jon Forsyte leaves embers of a passion that are ready to ignite - with dreadful consequences.
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Very worthwhile
- By Jonathan Kalkstein on 09-27-22
By: John Galsworthy
What listeners say about The Good Soldier
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- E. W. Sawyer
- 08-28-14
Brilliant writing!
This is considered one of the finest novels of the early twentieth century. The story and characters are suffocating - slowly killing each other and themselves - and we readers - through their idleness and pointlessness. However, and this is an enormous HOWEVER for anyone who is interested in HOW novels are written, I have never seen such an exquisite example of moving backwards and forwards in time to construct the story and characters. I may read this again and again just to see how Ford did it. It is simply brilliant.
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- Ironed out
- 06-18-12
INTOXICATING
Would you listen to The Good Soldier again? Why?
This is such a brilliantly written story. I not only listened to it but also
downloaded the book because I wanted to savor the language and descriptions of
the story of these characters. The narrator is wonderful!
Have you listened to any of Ralph Cosham’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No, but I will in the future
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Just savored every moment of it.
Any additional comments?
A must to listen to.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Jefferson
- 05-28-13
The Clueless Cuckold and the Romantic Philanderer
The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Maddox Ford is "the saddest story" the narrator has ever heard, but because it's so well written about unlikeable characters who have been emotionally destroyed before the first chapter begins, it engrossed rather than moved me. The narrator, John Dowell, a Pennsylvania Quaker and a member of the American idle rich, is telling the tragic story of the relationships in the early 20th century Europe between himself and his wife, Florence, the relationship then between a married couple of the English aristocracy, Captain Edward Ashburnham ("the good soldier") and his wife Leonora, and the relationships between the four of them. He's telling the story in the way that people who witness disasters like "the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people" feel compelled to write about them for the benefit of future generations or simply "to get the sight out of their heads." Unsure whether to begin at the beginning and progress chronologically to the end, or to tell his imagined listener whatever comes to his mind when it comes and to fill in missing things as needed, he settles on the latter method. This makes the novel innovative for its time, an early example of modernism, though without the stream of consciousness of writers like Virginia Woolf. Dowell recounts how his wife, "poor dear Florence," was, he thought, an invalid with a heart condition that required him to live as her caretaker for the twelve years they were together, carefully monitoring all subjects of conversation to suppress any "dangerous" topics (involving religion or strong emotions or politics, etc.) so as to avoid upsetting her weak heart. It also involved complete celibacy, so that her bedroom door (in whatever European resort or spa hotel they happened to be staying in) was always locked to him. After three years in Europe, Dowell and Florence met the Ashburnhams in Nauheim, Germany, a famous heart spa town, and for over nine years the two couples made a happy foursome, Dowell believed, and if the apple he thought was perfect turned out to be rotten at the core after nearly nine years and six months, to him it was delicious until the end of that period.
This is not to spoil the book, because from the beginning Dowell tells us that the two seemingly happy loving couples, who seemed to make together "an extraordinarily safe castle," or "one of those tall ships with the white sails upon a blue sea, one of those things that seem the proudest and safest of all the beautiful and safe things that God has permitted the mind of man to frame," or a perfectly choreographed and instinctively coordinated "minuet de la cour," were destroyed by adultery, falseness, hatred, love, and death. The Good Soldier employs the cuckoldry or philandering of husbands, the duplicity or domination of wives, and the innocent cruelty of youth to explore the opacity of human nature, the impossibility of knowing what another person (especially a spouse) is really feeling and thinking, and the ungovernable nature of the human heart.
Despite Ford's incisive insights into our flawed human nature, the different influences of Protestant and Catholic Christianities on true believers, and the differences between early 20th century American and British characters and cultures, and despite his vivid metaphors, distilled dialogue, innovatively non-chronological story-telling, and perfectly constructed narrative (told by a man scrupulously relating the history of his devastating obtuseness), The Good Soldier and its characters were rather unpleasant.
The reading by Ralph Cosham is, like any book he reads, flawlessly delivered without showing off, adding to his voice the perfectly appropriate emotion and intention for every scene in the novel without any straining after different characters' voices. The problem is that whereas Cosham's method and style and voice are all just right for Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Robinson Crusoe, for example, here his tendency to turn phrases and sentences down at their ends works with the sordid story to make it all the more of a downer.
I recommend this novel to people who like a good tragedy revealed in layers and layers (like a morose and moldy onion being unpeeled little by little), or to people who want to read one of the best 100 novels in the English language to see what it's like and how it was innovative, or to people who are interested in plumbing the sad and mysterious depths of the human heart.
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6 people found this helpful
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- NOLAHunter
- 08-13-12
Good narrator wasted on dull and dated story
The Good Soldier appears on some lists of the best 100 books of the 20th century. Maybe because it was groundbreaking in its day. Now the characters do seem very compelling or interesting and their stories are tedious. Ralph Cosham is a fine reader and does a good job with material that seems quited dated. I recommend Cosham's reading of the Dubliners by james Joyce if you want a match of good narrator and good story. Best thing about The Good Soldier is that it wasn't too long although I was ready for the story to end long before it actually did.
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- Darwin8u
- 08-03-12
This Book ain't Ice Cream on the Beach Folks
What? You mean this novel isn't about war? Is it possible to hate a book and love it at the same time? This is one of those books where it immediately becomes obvious that you aren't going to read this novel for the strict pleasure of it. This book ain't ice cream on the beach folks. I don't think I've run across a more amoral, unsympathetic cast of characters since I visited Kehlsteinhaus. But, Ford Madox Ford is absolutely brilliant at portraying the decay, the depravity and the hypocrisy that existed in early 20th century English and American aristocracy. What a bunch of absolute rat bastards they all were. Nobody is happy. Nobody is true. Everybody gets eventually exactly what they deserve.
This novel is probably the most sexless novel containing the subtitle: A Tale of Passion. It is as sexy as a festering cavity and as passionate as an obsessive and unreliable group of narcissists can be. Two of my favorite writers were either heavily influenced by Ford (Graham Greene) or collaborated heavily with Ford (Joseph Conrad). This isn't a novel you can really ever love, but you will carry this novel with you and days and weeks later you still won't be able to escape its funky grasp. And THAT is something.
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26 people found this helpful
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- Pam W
- 07-14-12
A narration of lives, tragically wasted.
What a strange book this is. The whole book delves into the completely dysfunctional lives of two couples, and their relationship with each other. Infidelity seems to be the theme, along with just a boredom of life. It is completely depressing, but at the same time very interesting. The book was written in the early 1900's, with the setting in that same era. Which makes it totally different from any modern day writings, and adds to the interest to me, as I haven't read too many books written in that time frame. It's done, as a narration from the point of view, of one of the main character's. He reminisces stories, trying to explain just what happened to him and the other 3 of the 4. Can be confusing, at times, as he jumps around from story to story. But, in the end it's all understandable, and quite tragic. Definitely different, and I don't know exactly how I feel about the book as a whole.
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4 people found this helpful
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- SW Clemens
- 08-13-12
A brilliant character study of a fool
Would you consider the audio edition of The Good Soldier to be better than the print version?
Yes.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
I found it a fascinating character study of a class of people with enough money to travel and indulge their vices, yet without ambition or direction. It's also a beautifully written book. It would have been more aptly titled The Sound and the Fury, because it is truly "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The protagonist/first person narrator is clueless, and often states, "I don't know; perhaps you can make sense of it," or phrases to that effect. It's obvious he learned nothing from the experience he relates. Even so, it's worth reading for its precise prose and the fascinating way the author weaves in flashbacks. Written in 1915, in style Ford Madox Ford falls in a direct line between Henry James and Ernest Hemingway. Though more reminiscent of James in both subject matter and style, there are passages that will remind you of Hemingway's character descriptions in The Sun Also Rises. The least rewarding aspect of the story is the failure of the male characters to grow. They are unbelievably dull-witted, which can become tedious with repetition.
What about Ralph Cosham’s performance did you like?
Ralph Cosham brings just the right tone of ennui and cluelessness that makes the first person narrator both a charming fool and an annoying idiot.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Ahsan
- 07-30-12
Interesting novel, disliked narration
Disliked the narrator. Perhaps this book is better read in print, because the random jumps in time and circumstance were difficult to follow.
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- Margaret
- 07-25-12
Not memorable
Would you try another book from Ford Madox Ford and/or Ralph Cosham?
no
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
none
How could the performance have been better?
Performace was okay.
Did The Good Soldier inspire you to do anything?
no
Any additional comments?
It's been a while since I listened to this book and the fact that I don't remember too much about it pretty much indicates what the experience meant for me.
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- beatrice
- 10-21-12
the unreliable narrator par excellence
I found this book enormously engaging, because every statement--whether the narrator's or his accounts of what other characters have said--must be weighed for degrees of truth: each person has his or her own self-interests to rationalize and justify. Ralph Cosham's voice perfectly expresses the appropriate nuances of self-doubt, puzzlement, and regret. I liked Cosham's work here so much that I subsequently chose him as my narrator for Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," and noticed that while his voice sounded younger and fuller for HoD, for TGS he seemed more a master of the meaningful pause, making his reading of this devastating story all the more powerful.
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10 people found this helpful