Love the old story - silly and very funny (but of its time) HATED the narration.

Great old favourite- definitely of its time but narrator was just dreadful - accents all over the place and mispronouncing so many words. The curating curate stuck in my mind.

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Fun and light hearted.

This story is an old friend but the terrible accents and mispronounced words were annoying.

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Spoiled by an appalling narrator

I have read this book over and over since my youth and I was excited to find the audiobook version, but the narration is so terrible, it really ruined the whole thing. The same narrator that did hatchet job on this book also butchered Emily - mispronunciation, incorrect reading of the text, and a terrible array of accents, apart from a few acceptable Northern accents. I really don’t understand how such a terrible narration would have been released - it’s embarrassing to listen to and totally detracts from what is a great (if dated) story.

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3 people found this helpful

The Accents are hilarious!

Really if you can’t do accents, you shouldn’t try. Hilarious!! Classic Gilly Cooper, definitely of it’s time

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Great book - narrator dreadful

Couldn’t pronounce the words properly and so was often left thinking what? Appalling accents - Italian sounded like something my four year old would pronounce but the story is great - very much of its time so rather misogynistic and would be a #metoo situation now. However gotta love Jilly Cooper

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Great nostalgia but grating narration

Lovely to be reminded of this old ‘classic’ - though be prepared for some VERY dated and dodgy attitudes - sexism etc
However experience let down by some very poor and repeated mispronunciations throughout the narration - feels like there’s no production process. Shame.

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2 people found this helpful

The reader !!

I loved this book when it was first published - and looked forward to listening to an old favourite. It was almost spoiled by the reader!!! Her “accents” drove me wild - but more importantly - her mispronunciation of so many simple words ( eg. Curate) - would have been laughable if not so irritating! A good reader makes such a difference to even the best of books. Often - I can overcome that by the end of the book - but this was still irritating me into the last chapter!

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Narrated by Mrs Malaprop

So I always feel that we have to approach Jilly Cooper's romances in the same way that we would, say, Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, as dispatches from a different time when sexual politics and the treatment of women in society were very different. I listen to Jilly Cooper's books from time to time from nostalgia as I read them voraciously when they came out, but the rampant chauvinism is totally cringeworthy in today's more enlightened "woke" age, not to mention reminding us what life was like post pill but pre-AIDS. WASP-male world indeed. There's quite a lot of clunky terminology, even more clunky behaviour but the most clunks came from the narrator. Did she not read the book through at all before she recorded it? There was so much mispronounciation that what started as making me giggle ended in making me fume with irritation at the sheer unprofessionalism of it all. Did nobody else at the publishers listen to the recordings either? Apart from that, the narration was just okay aside, again, from her Irish accent which lived for most of the time on Merseyside (shame the "hero" was supposed to be Irish) and when one of the French characters was supposed to speak in a Yorkshire accent I thought she was going to do her epiglottis a mischief. So, lots of problems, but Jilly Cooper, along with Jackie Collins, invented the genre of the chick-lit bonkbuster and certainly writes a great story. I was immediately transported back to the early 1970s, the sights, the smells and the sexism. If you can see past that, and some words which may cause offence, then 10/10 for the story, 3/10 for the narration

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6 people found this helpful

Fantastic

Good story, well written and well read, really enjoyed this book. Would recommend to anyone.

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Pronunciation matters

The story is dated - but that’s ok when it’s a product of its time. Performers really should be familiar with common words when they read, however (it’s ‘infinITEly not ‘infately’, for example and pSalm, not ‘palm’). Also with the accents they attempt. It was disconcerting for an Irish character to be sounding Brummie and Scouse in turns. If I’m doubt, it would be far better not to attempt it!

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1 person found this helpful