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Parade's End
- Penguin Classics
- Narrated by: Bill Nighy
- Series: Parade's End, Book 1-4
- Length: 35 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
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Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
Consisting of four novels - Some Do Not..., No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up and The Last Post - Parade's End is the story of Christopher Tietjens and his progress from the secure world of Edwardian England into the First World War and beyond.
Both a portrait of a love triangle - between Tietjens, his beautiful and reckless wife, Sylvia, and the suffragette Valentine - and a depiction of life on the Western Front, Parade's End is one of the greatest fictional works of the 20th century. Ranging from the drawing rooms of England to the trenches of France, and moving between past and present, it is a haunting exploration of identity, loss and memory.
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What listeners say about Parade's End
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- J. Lockwood
- 03-04-21
A real treat
I found this story accessible, moving and, in parts, very amusing. It is closer to Proust than anything I have read in English: a meandering storyline; introspection and “stream of consciousness”; characters who pop up again and again in the story; characters who are admirable, despicable or just plain hopeless.
Bill Nighy tackles this long, at times rambling text with its cast of upper class and working class characters admirably. His regional accents are well performed - though if I have one criticism, it is of the way the ‘lower’ classes in post-WWI Sussex all seem to speak with Northern accents. Nighy is not great at French or German either - but I think we can forgive him this. After all, I am not much good at acting!
This was a great introduction for me to the world of audiobooks. And also to a book that I hope I will come back to.
4 people found this helpful