And usually butchered for sensationalism.įeel dumb I didn't spot the abridgement classification. If this book were a movie would you go see it? What does Lynn Redgrave bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book? If you’ve listened to books by Edward Rutherfurd before, how does this one compare? I do not think I want to finish this audiobook. Like reading a 'Readers Digest' version of 'Gone with the Wind' or some such thing.

It just does not feel more than mundane now.

Then I checked and found out it was an abridgement. It didn't inspire the imaginative pictures like the first time. After listening to this audio version, something was flat.

I was not able to finish for one reason or another, but the picture in my head of what I did read stayed with me for all these years. Well, I started reading this book when it first came out. I didn't realize it was an abridged copy. Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not? And so, we have the magical formula of previous Rutherfurd novels with the same sense of the passing of centuries but a shorter time period allowing for more character development and drama, culminating in the Austen period, a favorite in British history, just at the time when the New Forest was at its most bustling.īeware, Abridged. The largest family in the novel is modeled loosely upon the extended family of Jane Austen, together with certain other known families from the New Forest area. It is against this backdrop that Rutherfurd tells a tale of woodsmen, monks, sailors, craftswomen and families. On its eastern side is the ancient Saxon capital of Winchester, the great port of Southampton from which the Titanic set out, and the QE2 sails to this day, and beyond that Portsmouth, home of the British Navy. The river Avon runs down the forest's western edge. Jane Austen and her family lived just 25 miles northeast of the forest. Edward Rutherfurd's new audiobook covers four centuries of British history, with the New Forest as background, culminating in a five-family saga set in the days of Jane Austen.įew places in England are more resonant, more mysterious yet more friendly than the huge forest that lies by England's southern coast, that provided hunting for England's Saxon and Norman kings, and whose ancient oaks were used to build Nelson's navy.

Rutherfurd the forest