Library Journal - Audio
Dickens immediately is associated with long, serialized novels and moralistic Christmas tales. The sketches here are earlier works that constitute his first published stories. Like his later writings, they contain detailed descriptions of 19th-century London combined with humor and social commentary. Not bad, but not nearly as engaging or powerful as his later novels. VERDICT David Timson, a prolific and popular audiobook reader with a beautifully mannered tone, delivers a competent and enjoyable reading. However, a narrator with a stronger street voice might have been a more dynamic choice. Recommended for fans of Dickens and/or 19th-century British fiction.—I. Pour-El, Des Moines Area Community Coll., Boone, IA
OCTOBER 2012 - AudioFile
David Timson weaves his special magic as a one-man full cast in this abridged production of Dickens’s earliest magazine publications of essays and short stories. While delivering the author’s observations of London in the morning and at night, the Greenwich fair, and the fixation of Londoners on their gardens, Timson adopts a lively and contemplative tone. He hits his stride in the comic short stories, for which he creates multiple, often hilarious, character voices. “The Tuggses at Ramsgate” features the clipped-voiced Captain Waters, his mournful and duplicitous wife, Belinda, and the nervous and lovelorn Simon/Cymon Tuggs, who gets thrown from a donkey. The cadaverous and intentionally miserable Nicodemus Dumps—“the most unfortunate man in the world”—in “The Bloomsbury Christening” is pure genius. A.B. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
