Stacy Keach's readings of the short stories are excellent. William Hurt's reading of The Sun Also Rises is top quality. There are several good readings available. One of Hemingway's enduring qualities is that he writes on the page the way his narrators would speak. The reading makes the listener want to sit and reflect on scenes and chapters. It is too dense a work for a single sitting. Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting? He did not resort to the stereotype caricatures that an inferior reader might have attempted in order to play to the gallery. In addition to Henry's narrative voice, I liked the way Slattery realised the Italian characters. Which character – as performed by John Slattery – was your favourite? The narrator, Frederic Henry, dominates the novel. I read the text alongside the audio and I thought Slattery's reading brought out tones and inflections I might have missed on the page. He negotiates the accents (American, Italian, English, Scottish, Swiss) convincingly. He gets the balance between the hard-bitten laconic tone of the narrative, from the terse war reflections to the suppressed pain at the end. John Slattery does a fine job narrating Hemingway's classic novel. Would you consider the audio edition of A Farewell to Arms to be better than the print version?
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