Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

'What have you been judging from?...Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?' 

During an eventful season at Bath, young, naive Catherine Morland experiences fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who introduces Catherine to the joys of Gothic romances, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father's house, Northanger Abbey. There, influenced by novels of horror and intrigue, Catherine comes to imagine terrible crimes committed by General Tilney, risking the loss of Henry's affection, and has to learn the difference between fiction and reality, false friends and true. With its broad comedy and irrepressible heroine,Northanger Abbey is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen's works. 


WHISPER STORIES IN MY EAR CHALLENGE

I have always disliked this book, mainly because of the weird and wonderful adaptations that there have been. They are just so...bizarre.

But to read (or rather listen too) I liked this. The bizarre aspect is there but it isn't as heavy as the TV films make it out to be.

But, is it just me or is Catherine a little THICK! I mean really! She is so dim that it kind of grated on my nerves at some points. I just wanted to yell at her to get a clue already. But then I suppose that she is meant to be that way. After all she has never been away from the little village that she has lived in all her life so she is a bit sheltered. But with all of the reading that she is supposed to have done you would have thought that she would be a little brighter that she is portrayed and be able to add 2 and 2 together, but instead it seems that all the novels she has read really have rotted her brain. She views things with suspicion that are completely normal and things that aren't quite right go straight over her head. Obviously some guys find that attractive but to me it was just plan irritating. 

To be honest there are only a few of the Jane Austen heroes out there that I actually like.  Some of them strike me as being weak and well... wimps. But I think I could have easily got used to Henry - if I had too.






Narrator - Jill Balcon
Length - 3hrs 6mins
Published - 26/07/2006

I found this to be a little bit of a disappointment. The reader, though great at doing the female characters wasn't terribly good at the men, she had a way of making them seem pompous so matter who she was meant to be at the time. And then there was the fact this this was the ABRIDGED version. I didn't realise this until the first part ended a little too soon to be the full story. *shiver* even the word abridged brings me out in a rash. So, all in all a disappointment. Other readers do it better justice in my opinion.
And whoever was in charge of the abridging they need a good talking too because near the end things just did not make sense at all - it could have been done A LOT better.