Entertaining stories, odd narration

I bought this despite mixed reviews having read a few of the stories, because there was no other full recording. I do agree that the narration is quite difficult to listen to - there are odd pauses and stresses in strange places in sentences, and pronunciation errors, not to mention some really terrible accents. This does make it quite hard to focus on, but the stories are still good and the narration wasn’t so bad as to detract from that too much.

One thing worth mentioning is that these stories are a product of their time, and do contain language and stereotypes which are wildly outdated and offensive nowadays. This can make for quite uncomfortable listening at times, but are reflective of the (unfortunately) common attitudes at that period.

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Woeful

I liked the tv series so thought this would be the same.
Wrong.
The narrator has a monotone voice so all the participants sounded as Sean Connery or Micheal Cane were narrating.
May be just me, I found the whole of part 1 hard to follow, so the rest will not get a listen or mention.

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6 people found this helpful

Narration ruined it - and it really should have a warning as some of the racism is highly offensive

I’ve enjoyed tv and radio adaptations of Father Brown, so thought I’d give this a try.
Some of the descriptive writing, of landscape etc, is lovely; but the rest is a bit clunky. For example the writer doesn’t have to constantly refer to “the little priest” and comment on his size. This got very tiresome after a while.
The narrator is pretty awful; although in fairness to him, he’s quite good at accents.
Even by the standards of its time, the racism is pretty dreadful. If you are at all liable to be offended by such things, don’t listen to The God of the Gongs (Chapter 21 Book 2) it’s totally shocking.
All in all it was pretty disappointing on a number of levels.

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Monotonous narration

The stories might be ok, but it drags and you miss some of the story because you stop listening at times...feels so uninteresting due to the narrator not being up to scratch. Overall, downloaded 41 hours and listened to only 3 hours worth, one to avoid unless you only listen to one chapter every so often

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4 people found this helpful

Terrible Narrator

I'm struggling here. The narrator clearly hasn't familiarised himself with each story and continuously raises and lowers the pitch of his voice in the misguided notion that this obscures the fact that he is a poor actor reading his lines. It's distracting to hear this sing-song voice while trying to absorb the content. It's hard to judge the book itself because this repels engagement. That said, I'm not overly impressed, as it's way too far-fetched. The Father Brown character hardly appears in it so far (I'm up to chapter 6) and it really needs a human element to draw one in.

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hard work

not for me hard work I had to abandon it hope you find it better than I did

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4 people found this helpful

Unfortunatly long, and poor

I was looking forward to this, I am a fan of classic writing. it is admittedly difficult to avoid comparing this to the excellent Sherlock Holmes, which could be unfair, but there is no comparison. I found the Father Brown to be painfully bad. The character himself is frustratingly cryptic to the point you would dismiss him because he can't make himself understood, he seems to enjoy being this way so comes across as arrogant. The stories do not offer any interest. by the time I stopped listening I found I was simply trying to 'Power through'. given the length of this I would recommend not investing your time.

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terrible narrator

Awful narrator, such a shame as loved reading them. Wouldn't recommend, unless could be read by another so disappointing

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2 people found this helpful

bloody marvelous

The father brown stories are an exceptional piece of work.
I'd advise everybody to give em a try.
they're very much of their time.

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5 people found this helpful

Terrible narration

The terrible narration ruined this book for me. The reader failed to bring out any nuance. I was unable to listen to any more than a short part of the whole thing. He may be ok for something like Dick Barton, but not for the thoughtful and subtle Father Brown

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