'By far the most humane and imaginatively sympathetic account yet for the general reader' Amanda Craig, New Statesman
Claire Tomalin was literary editor of the New Statesman then the Sunday Times before leaving to become a full-time writer. Her first book, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, won the Whitbread First Book Award, and she has since written a number of highly acclaimed and bestselling biographies. They include Jane Austen: A Life, The Invisible Woman, a definitive account of Dickens' relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan, which won three major literary awards, and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self was Whitbread Book of the Year in 2002. In the highly acclaimed Charles Dickens: A Life, she presents a full-scale biography of our greatest novelist. She is married to the writer Michael Frayn.
Tomalin's sprawling biography of one of history's most revered literary figures-with its dizzying cast of characters and mixture of literary criticism, detailed historical record keeping, psychological insight, and human drama-would present a challenge to any audiobook narrator. Thankfully Alex Jennings is more than up to the task, successfully rendering the complicated inner struggles that shaped the temperament and life of Charles Dickens. Jennings also provides spot-on dialects and accents, particularly in sections of the book that detail Dickens's travels to the United States and dealings with his American contemporaries. Keeping pace with this audio edition requires active listening, but Jennings's narration is more than rewarding. A Penguin hardcover. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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