Interesting story

I thoroughly enjoyed the story but the narration was dreadful. I stuck with it as I had never read this particular book but I would not buy anything read by this narrator again.

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Worth staying with

It was free but I have read little of this author It was worth staying with could say I spied by Edgar Alan Poe and Mary Shelly

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Could not listen for long

Though the prose was wonderful the reading was so bad I had to give up on this.

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Good story terrible narration

I really enjoyed this story. Unexpected tone and subject matter from George Eliot, but deliciously creepy.

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An early creepy story by master / mistress of character and plot

I enjoyed the story and its delivery was perfect. Those who left a negative review about the performance by Cive Shafer have totally missed the point. He was delivery a monologue in the words of the protagonist and had to speak in character. Latimer is supposed to be a bleak depressed and character who is disliked and viewed as almost ghostlike by others. Shafer's perfect diction and somber delivery was perfect for George Eliots intention!

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Performance ruins book.

The performance is distanced and monotonous. Makes it very difficult to engage with the character.

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1 person found this helpful

An introduction to George Eliot

Found this hard going, to be honest. The narration certainly didn’t help, as the audiobook had the matter-of-fact feel of a car maintenance video on changing spark plugs. I got to the end, but only as a result of a combination of dogged determination and a lengthy delay in gridlocked traffic. And it was only two hours.

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Something a bit different

At first it seemed like something full of angst and trouble, which I never get on with. But then I realised that George Eliot had been an objective woman, as i believe myself to be, as we can read in her other novels, particularly Daniel Deronda.
These are feminised times, and many of us have learnt self-important and 'entitled' thinking over the last 60 years and more.
And I heard descriptions of the selfish female which is quite overlooked in modern writings, where men are always the villains and the female is the long-suffering badly treated one.
So yes, I like this little novella.

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Still worth a listen if it's free

I didn't enjoy the narrator I'm afraid but the story is enjoyable. I got this free so I could put up with it but for me I wouldn't pay for it as I found the narrator a bit lacking.

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Bertha don't you come around here anymore

George Eliot was the pseudonym of a woman called Mary Anne Evans. She wrote under a male pen name so as to escape from stereotypes of women's writing which at the time (mid 19th century) was still mostly Jane Austin style lighthearted romances. The Lifted Veil is one of Eliot's lesser known works which tells the story of a young man called Latimer who becomes obsessed with Bertha, his brother's finance. So far, so Jane Austin style lighthearted romance, I hear you say, and you would be correct, until that it you hear of the twist in the plot structure that means that Latimer is able to glimpse into the future. His premonitions are deeply disturbing and the motto of this story may well be "be careful what you wish for". Some consider The Lifted Veil to be an early example of science fiction but those who approach this book expecting it to be comparable with Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker will be disappointed. It is, however, well done and makes for an interesting but short listen.

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3 people found this helpful