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Brazzaville Beach

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Brazzaville Beach

By: William Boyd
Narrated by: Pippa Bennett-Warner
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

On Brazzaville Beach, on the edge of Africa, Hope Clearwater ponders the strange circumstances that led her to leave her husband, John, and his mathematical obsessions in England and venture to Africa to help world-renowned scientist Eugene Mallabar with his studies of wild chimps.

But the more Hope studies Mallabar, the more she comes to believe that something isn't right. That behind Mallabar and his obsessive work there lies another more sinister truth: one that might also help explain Hope's reasons for leaving England....

©1990 William Boyd (P)2020 Penguin Audio Genre Fiction Psychological Fiction Suspense Africa

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Critic reviews

"A brilliant storyteller...a book which stretches, tantalizes and delights." (Financial Times)

"A most extraordinary parable about mankind. Quite unlike anything else I have read." (Sunday Express)

"Brilliant, daring. A gripping and compulsive story." (Herald)
All stars
Most relevant
I loved this work. Two separate stories, expertly woven together. Absolutely fascinating, irresistible. A must listen!

Wonderful story-telling, impeccably read

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Excellent book, thoughtful and insightful, touching on a wide variety of subjects supported by great narration.

My book of the year

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This version epitomises a bugbear growing steadily worse in my listening experience: a beautiful trained voice emerging from a grotesquely under-educated mouth. I believe this may be the result of young people aspiring to be actors too early in their education, and finishing up as someone with perfect elocution and a very poor grasp of the English language. The mispronunciations of long words are legion here; at least one per page, and I don't exaggerate. One example of dozens: tributaries pronounced 'try-beautaries' with the accent on the first syllable. Ms Bennet-Warner clearly has never seen the word before and has no idea what it means. 'Secede' pronounced as 'succeed'. Another: Danube pronounced 'de-noob' with the accent on the second. At least someone pointed this out to her and she corrected it in the second half of the book, but to not go back and edit in correct pronunciations I consider cheap and dismissive of the reader. Not acceptable. William Boyd must be furious,

A great and famous book, bizarre narration

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This was a story of limited appeal. Tensions and dilemmas less than enthralling and characters of stock middle-class sensibilities without deeper or wider resonance. Thematically ok but more playing with ideas than gripping and intriguing. After enjoying audio versions of several Boyd books this was underwhelming. Despite a good voice the reader seemed to be rushing and I found the high level of mispronunciation and faulty emphasis distracting and annoying. This is always a possible scenarion given Boyd’s wide range of diction but it is nonetheless a weakness.

Muted drama

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Unfortunately the narrator’s frequent mispronunciation of words was off-putting and distracting. It was narrated as if she was in some sort of reading race, which not only made it hard to process the information without slowing it down to 0.9 speed, but also caused her to stumble over the phrasing at times. I think the speed-reading also caused her to miss the poignant indicators of mood in certain passages resulting in inappropriate intonation.
A very poor performance that dragged what was a mediocre storyline (for Boyd), down to the level of suffering.

Completely Ruined by Awful Narrator!

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