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Moby Dick
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 23 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
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Summary
Critic reviews
"[A]n intense, superbly authentic narrative. Its theme and central figure...are reminiscent of Job in his search for justice and of Oedipus in his search for truth." ( Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature)
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What listeners say about Moby Dick
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-06-13
Brilliant Novel, Brilliant Performance: Flawless!
I first read Moby Dick when I was about fourteen and loved it. I saw the movie with Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab on t.v. as a Sunday afternoon matinee and enjoyed that too but the movie was all about action and not about the music of language so it never matched up to the book for me. The novel is poetry and a 'stream of consciousness' and a rich exploration of a million ideas about the rewards, laments, pleasant and unpleasant sensations of life. It is a 'classic' because it endures reading after re-reading and throughout a lifetime it is always a new experience to read it. Now in my fifties, I must have read Moby Dick maybe twenty times and I guess I will read it many more times in the years ahead.
Don't ask me for a synopsis of the 'story' because for such a sophisticated novel, any synopsis is a betrayal. Okay, you twisted my arm, here's a brief summary: an American feels jaded by life on land, goes to sea in a whaler, befriends Queequeg, a Pacific Islander harpoonier, is drawn into Captain Ahab's obsession with hunting down a great white whale that had previously injured the captain, leaving him with only one leg (and a peg leg made of whalebone), with dramatic, tragic consequences. In the course of which narrative, the author gives us vivid descriptions of scenes and characters, wonderful asides expressing pithy opinion on virtually everything under the sun, and generally presents himself, the author, as the most fascinating human being amongst a whole cast of amazing and interesting people, his characters, none of whom is a mere stereotype but all sublimely unique and a Romantic hero - all 'cool' (Melville's own term). You can't spend time amongst such elevated company without feeling inspired and inflamed with a desire to be a Romantic hero too - you can see why I fell in love with the book as a fourteen-year-old, chuckle. Now over fifty, no longer a hero to myself or anyone, I still love the author's imagination and artistry and his moral courage able to paint humanity as so absolutely admirable and always noble or at least 'cool', even when 'lowly sailors' in their right mind and eating dumplings or respectable Captains, crazed, and stumping the deck in the graveyard watch.
A favourite book, I was wary of buying an audio recording because who could ever match up to the narrator in my own head and summon up the same rich and fascinating inner images and the same varied emotional responses? The movies failed, could an audio performance succeed? I tried all the versions of Moby Dick on offer through Audible.co.uk and settled on this version because I was bowled over by the performance of Anthony Heald. I can't praise it enough! He reads with sensitivity, a deep engagement with the text, a dramatic flare. I called Moby Dick a 'stream of consciousness' and as such it needs to be 'inhabited' so the text flows, it has to feel like it is coming spontaneously from a human soul, someone who is letting us share in his experiences, sensations, thoughts as they occur. Anthony Heald is able to do this and his reading brings out all the rich complexity of the text, its poetry, and all the rich complexity of the characters, their varied feelings and thoughts. You 'live' Moby Dick with this performance. It deserves some sort of award. Are there Oscars for audio performances? This recording makes all the others sound like computer generated text-to-voice.
Warning: a great novel is not like a trashy paperback, you cannot read it with half your attention and 'get it'. A great novel requires you to read it with respect, full attention, pulling your own weight in the author-reader partnership. Similarly, some audio books are so badly performed you can tune in and out and miss little. Shrug. But other audio books, and this version of Moby Dick is certainly one, enshrine great solo performances by excellent character actors and deserve the same committed attention you'd give an actor in a theatre. Bottom line, to get value from anything you usually have to put effort into it. A willingness to devote attention to this great book, whether you read it or listen to an unabridged audio recording of it, will bring great reward.
Note: this recording misses out the material included at the beginning of the printed book (copyright, contents, introduction, etymology, extracts) and begins with 'Chapter One: Loomings'. I do not find this spoils my pleasure but other reviewers have complained that these omissions mean the recordings are not acurately described as 'unabridged'. I guess it would matter if this were my only copy of Moby Dick but since I have both print and eBook versions the omission is trivial for me.
Summary, if you love classic literature and are willing to invest attention to a masterly performance then I most heartily recommend Moby Dick as read by Anthony Hearn. Absolutely TOP MARKS. Personally, I will be looking out for more performances by Mr Hearn. Call me a fan, chuckle.
21 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Tom
- 04-07-07
better off with an abridged version?
I read Moby Dick when I was a student and recalled that it was a bit of a struggle to get through to the end. Listening to it again made me remember why. Although the book is rightly regarded as a classic, to the modern reader, it is terribly padded in the middle with long dissertations on all aspects of whaling, sometimes in minute and confusing detail which rather detracts from the momentum of the story - which is undoubtedly a thriller when it is allowed to get going. Although I am not generally a fan of abridged versions, I think this book might be an exception.
On the plus side the reader does a masterful job and I think it was his superb performance that made for an entertaining experience, and kept me going to the end.
20 people found this helpful
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- Mrs
- 30-01-12
Good book but goes off plot a lot
I enjoyed listening to this book. One of the main reasons is the narration. Anthony Heald really made the book come alive. I am not usually a fan of dramatic readings but it worked brilliantly for me this time.
I did find the book a bit hard going when the author went off plot and started talking about whaling. This happened a lot in the middle and it did detract from the rhythm of the story. But this book is a classic and who am I to argue with it.
Overall it’s a good listen.
4 people found this helpful
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- Jackie
- 07-01-12
Terrific
This is a book I've wanted to read for some time, but just didn't get around to it. I finally decided on the audio version as the best way to tackle it. It was a really good choice. The narrator, Anthony Heald was excellent, the story was absorbing and all the peripheral facts about whaling and whales and life at sea as it was at the time were totally absorbing.
4 people found this helpful
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- h
- 05-12-18
Magnificent performance.
Anthony Heald's reading of this long saga is magnificent. He gets the tone exactly right. The dry humour, the huge drama and the forensic detail all spot on.
This is a long long voyage. You will learn more about 19th century whaling than you ever though you would want to know. Stick with it. It's a worth it.
Hubby and I listened to together it in little bits over about 6 months. Gruelling in parts but once you're on Captain Ahabs crew there's no turning back!
And the ending is well worth the build up.
3 people found this helpful
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- Cosima
- 18-11-10
Moby Dick
I loved this version of the book, the narration brought all the characters to life. A great listen, highly recommended.
3 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 29-09-18
A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
Truly one of, if not thee finest epic put to page. A masterclass in description and metaphor, with quotable passages worthy of Milton or Shakespeare.
I confess, twice previous I’ve addressed myself to the epic, only to find myself distracted or turned off the story by its penchant for expansive scholarly asides. However, herald Mr. Heald’s reading! With clear, passionate delivery we ebb or thrust forward as the narrative demands. His delivery is a performance, each character their own, as notable as the finest actors whom have tackled mighty Ahab.
2 people found this helpful
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- Paul McConnochie
- 02-12-14
Phenomenal.
This performance, of an epic poetic masterwork, is nothing short of phenomenal. Anthony Heald, well done, Sir.
2 people found this helpful
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- charlie
- 04-06-22
Absolutely stunning
Fantastic story and brilliantly narrated. Captivating combination of fiction and fact. I was mesmerised.
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- Anonymous User
- 23-03-22
Perfect
What an amazing narration, the best I've heard so far, absolutely nails it down
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- Sarah C
- 06-06-08
Gripping despite the minutiae
I got it in my head last summer to read Moby Dick again after 30 years. Don't know what I was thinking, as I could not get past the first few chapters, I kept getting distracted and losing interest. On a whim, I downloaded this reading on Audible. I absolutely LOVED it! The narrator's unique voice and his colorful portrayal of the various (memorable!) characters in this long, rambling novel kept me fascinated and involved from the first minute to the last, many many hours later. In fact, when the novel ended, I kept respectful silence in my car for about a week, then listened to the whole thing over again, as there were many details that I seemed to have lost track of as the hours went on. Second time round, I was amazed at the symbolism, echoes, foreshadowing, and meditations on good vs. evil. I also kept trying to find clues as to why this is so often regarded as a great "American" novel--why American as opposed to any other country's? Still not sure about that, though I'm sure there are treatises and Ph.D's devoted to the topic if I wanted to pursue it. At any rate, I have come away from this narrator's reading convinced of Melville's brilliance and uniqueness as a novelist. I have simply never read (well, heard) a book like this one. I really think it's easier to have this novel read to you than to read it on the page. The discursions and treatises on whaling, shipping, the color white, depictions of the whale in art, blubber, ropes, shipboard carpentry and all the rest are fascinating when this particular narrator tells you about them in his distinctive accents and intonations. I don't know if I'll buy another contemporary novel on Audible again; I am pursuing readings of classic novels for the foreseeable future.
122 people found this helpful
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- Thomas
- 16-06-04
The Narrator Brings the Book Alive
I can't believe some found the narrator sub par. This guy did a great job with tough material and did so in a way that kept the story moving. I could never have read this book by myself and finished it. My hat is off to the narrator, excellent job. Bravo.
As for the content of the unabridged book, be prepared for lengthy dissertations on what the color white means, how whale is best prepared and whale anatomy. This book is best listen to in small segments but in the end you will be left with a sense of accomplishment for sticking it through. You will also be rewarded with a much better understanding of what it must have been like to be on a whaling vessel in the late 1800's.
51 people found this helpful
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- Eliana
- 22-12-07
This is THE WAY to
I approached this book with trepidation as I had heard it was formidable in terms of the patience required.
By the end of the book I was thinking that THIS is the way to experience the book! Like a Shakespearean play, which is richer in the "performance" than on the page, an audiobook of Moby Dick sweeps you into the action without burdening you with the unfamilar patterns of 19th century prose.
Starts a bit slow, but before you know it, you're just eager to see what happens next. By the end of it, I had a true appreciation for just how good, and how deserving of respect, this novel is.
29 people found this helpful
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- Nina
- 11-08-09
The Best Version!
Moby Dick is a brilliant novel, but it requires incredible attention. You need a reader who brings life to the words. Of the dozen readers with their versions of Moby Dick out there, Anthony Heald's is by far the best. He brings Moby Dick to life.
35 people found this helpful
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- J. Johnson
- 12-12-15
not a good way to consume moby dick
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
Moby Dick is a dense difficult book with unusual sentences and word usage. Melville has a large lexicon and prioritizes messy thought over linguistic tidiness, as he should. So its not the ideal book to consume on tape in the first place. What makes it worse, however, is that the narrator flies through sentences almost Shakespearean in complexity like it's nothing. If he would slow down and speak clearly instead of trying to talk like a literate pirate, he would have done me a service. I'd find myself relistening to chapters so I could grasp what Melville had written. You really need to be concentrating 100 percent, not driving, not running, not drowsy, not leaning house, just sitting on the couch. And by that point I might as well be reading Moby Dick.
7 people found this helpful
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- Christian
- 16-11-05
Adventure into deep thoughts
This book is as deep as it is difficult. When listening, make notes to look up obscure references to mythology, religion, and so forth. The book cannot be properly appreciated without understanding, for example, the connections between Perseus, Hercules, and Prometheus, or what the myth of Narcissus says. The ideas he works with are highly philosophical--he is criticizing and agreeing with certain philosophical positions and developing his own position as he wrestles with The Great Questions. This book cannot be fully appreciated in one, two, or even three readings--which is one reason why it is one of the greatest classics of all time. Take your time. Stop and think about the significance of strange passages. For example, the chapter on the whiteness of the whale, and the chapter on the study of whales, which reviewers were frustrated by, have significant meanings--they are not excess fat that should have been cut. Listen closely and you'll catch the humor, beauty, and sublimity of this masterpiece. After listening, return to it again in a few years. The second time around will likely yield a much richer experience.
22 people found this helpful
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Story

- Dan Harlow
- 09-05-14
Not a novel; epic poetry.
Any additional comments?
Samurai films are my favorite genre pictures. Mainly what attracts me to them isn't so much that I love Japanese history or ever wanted to be a samurai, it's that I love how a good, proper samurai film teases out the action until the finale. Samurai films are about patience; the slow burn. Shots might linger on the rain, or cherry blossoms, or footprints in the snow, or the sounds of cicadas in the summer heat but the 'action' isn't until after two hours of build up.
For me anticipation is what I love, perhaps more than the resolution itself. I love waiting for something to happen but I never really was that excited for the thing itself. I suppose I just like having something to look forward to. Expectation and imagination is, typically, far more interesting than reality.
A samurai would spend his entire life training for battle yet, like the samurai in Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' not be victorious even once. There would be very little glory in a war; only the young and inexperienced would find it romantic while the old veterans would know there is never really any winning a war.
And that is what Moby Dick is for me: a samurai film set at sea where the warriors are all Nantucket whalers and the villain is a fish.
Melville, too, must have felt similar about anticipation as I do. His whole novel - though this is not a novel, it's really an epic poem - is imagination and anticipation and beautiful images of the sea and of death and of the whaling life. Yet in the end it's all so futile.
"Great God, where is the ship?"
One thing I hadn't counted on about Moby Dick is how even though everyone who hasn't read the novel is well aware of it and the events within, it's not a book you can really know anything about without reading. This is a book, like Ulysses, you have to experience. You have to live through this novel; it has to happen to you. This isn't a story to be told in the normal sense - in fact the book is almost everything but a normal novel after we set sail - this is a book whose art is in forcing you to live the events of the book as if you are on that cursed ship.
Something that really struck me is that our narrator who is so famously introduced to us in one of the great first lines in a book - 'Call me Ishmael' - slowly ghosts away as the novel goes on. What starts as a book about Ishmael's experience getting on the ship and learning about whaling (and the entire science of whales), he lets go of our hand and we begin floating about the Pequod like a disembodied spirit. We overhear everyone's conversations, even their private mutterings, and the point of view expands out to be in all places at all times. It's an unsettling sensation because Melville is physically enlisting onto that ship as a shipmate and after our initial training we are forced to watch the events unfold to their conclusion.
I also had no idea that the novel is not really a novel - not in the traditional sense. Moby Dick is, basically, postmodern but from the 1850's. I had expected a somewhat straightforward novel about the grappling with a whale, not 209,117 pages of epic poetry. I had not expected the novel to still feel so fresh as it must have been when it was written nearing on 200 years ago.
One last thing that I have to confess is that I don't believe Ahab was mad. Obsessed? yes, but not insane. He was a salty captain with 40 years of experience at sea and he knew what he was doing. I don't even think he had a death wish, I just think he saw an opportunity to be truly great and flew at it with everything he had. He was already a great whaler (how else would he have lasted so long?) so he knew he could defeat that fish if he really tried. And I don't see anything wrong with that, too. All those men knew what they were in for and if Starbuck was more of a man he might have stopped Ahab, but Ahab is the sort of person who winds up wither being great or being killed; he is no ordinary person.
He's very American in that way - he'll damn everything to get what he wants.
Overall and beyond all the great themes of the novel is just how damn well it's written. There is nothing like this book. The language is so seductive, the imagery so vivid, everything on that ship and the sea so perfectly realized that there were times I had to pinch myself that this was real. Some of the writing is so good that it almost doesn't even seem possible, as if it were written by some God.
Now that I'm done with the book I'm sad. I've now read Moby Dick and there are only so many great novels in the world worth throwing a harpoon at. But what a voyage getting there!
21 people found this helpful
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- Ronnie M. Greher
- 27-08-06
The Best!
A great book and a great narrator. What more can you ask for? I only wish there were more of Melville's sea adventure books available as audio books.
13 people found this helpful
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- Karen
- 20-03-04
Much better than I remembered
I must confess that I hated this book the first time I read it and so was very pleasantly surprised to find that listening greatly improved the experience, so much so, that I've actually begun reading it again. Its true, parts are dull (catalogue of whales, etc.), but other parts are, amazingly, quite funny. I can finally see why it's considered one of the greatest of all American novels -- the adventure plot and provacative themes make for an engrossing listening experience. The only negative (hence the four-, instead of five-, star rating) was the narrator -- at times, I found his diction and tone a bit annoying.
19 people found this helpful
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- michael
- 13-10-08
Aesthetic experience
Finally! I have experienced Moby Dick at a depth and breadth that allows me to personally appreciate why many consider it a great American novel. Far exceeding my goal of getting me through the chapter about species of whales, this Audible edition involved me to the extent I could experience how incredibly unique (alien, really) and breathtakingly adventurous the life of a whaler was. Now...I wonder...is Ulysses within reach as a potential aesthetic experience?
12 people found this helpful