Dylan Thomas Reads a Child's Christmas in Wales and Five Poems/Cd [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Dylan Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1994

Dylan Thomas' reading on this recording elevated A Child's Christmas in Wales from casually dismissed prose, written by a poet to keep the wolf from the door, to new genre, of literature to be performed. It is now Thomas' most widely known work, a wistful, tender, touching, wide-eyed in wonder evocation of the sights, smells and sounds of a child's Christmas in a seaside town in Wales.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"December, in my memory, is as white as Lapland," Thomas recalls, reading a line from "A Child's Christmas in Wales." For the poet, December also bursts with "deadly snowballs," "blue knuckles" and snow that "grows overnight on the roofs of houses." Although phrases like these are beautiful on their own, hearing Thomas speak them adds a magnificent melancholy. He recorded these six pieces in New York City in 1952, and they've been remastered and collected into one wonderful package. In the title story, Thomas marvels at winter's quirky delights: presents and holiday sweets (including candy cigarettes), snow boots and footprints, aunts who lace their tea with rum, wind rustling through the trees, family music recitals and caroling (Thomas even sings a line or two of Good King Wenceslas). His Welsh-accented voice rises and falls as he reads the evocative tale of his own long-ago Christmas. Thomas performs the other selections-"Fern Hill," "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," "In the White Giant's Thigh," "Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait" and "Ceremony After a Fire Raid"-with an equally vibrant and powerful voice. While they don't conjure up the same wintry images as the lead piece, they marvelously round out this lovely assemblage.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Review

"There is so much music in his voice... enchanted by the sound of the words and the rich imagery." -- The New York Times --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Harper Audio; Unabridged edition (September 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898456487
• ISBN-13: 978-0898456486
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,043,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recapturing the past we never knew, December 21, 1999

By 

C. Radda (New Britain, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dylan Thomas Reads a Child's Christmas in Wales and Five Poems/Cd (Audio CD)

Christmas so often disappoints us. And why not? How could it ever live up to the sappy and maudlin presentations it suffers so often on TV, in the movies, even in commercials! Along comes Dylan Thomas (well he came along a while ago) and captures elements of the holiday that we can still live today. There is a town shut up against the cold with the occasional hardy soul braving the elements. There are families, rich in generations, sharing a day punctuated more by the telling of tales than the exchange of gifts. There are children overcoming their own fears of the unknown to give "Good King Wenceslaus" to a spectral figure behind a closed door. And there lies, on the final page and in the final line, an ending that captures all of what is best in the holiday and, maybe, what is best in all of us. Granted, until you hear the poet himself read this work, you will never capture the full effect, but you will come close. And you may be more ready for Christmas than you have ever been before.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous voice, November 2, 2004

By 

S. C. Watson (WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Child's Christmas In Wales CD (Audio CD)

I had read excerpts of A Child's Christmas in Wales and loved what I had read, but it wasn't until I heard the entire tale in Dylan's voice on NPR that I completely fell in love with it. Dylan's voice is warm, deep, slightly wry, and rolling.

If you haven't read it or heard it, it's a retelling of a Christmas past to a child. And it has the same questions and interruptions as you would expect from a small listener and has the same weight of an exaggerated epic that you might expect from a favorite uncle or father telling one of their "days of yore" stories.

I've been told that Dylan's largest fan base is in the U.S., and A Child's Christmas in Wales has the same charming humor and nostalgia that Rockwell's paintings and Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon Days capture. An idealized notion of American middle class values, but a hint of self-mocking that keeps it grounded. I think he perfectly captures the expectations of Christmas and the feel of large family gatherings. A favorite bit in which he describes the Uncles who sit in the parlors and breath like dolphins and the pale little aunts that seem to accumulate at family holidays:

"Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."

Every time I read or hear it I get some deep-rooted domestic compulsion and feel the need run out and buy eggnog, knit something (nevermind the fact that I don't know how to), or find a rocking chair to sit on in front of a fire.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An old tradition, November 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Dylan Thomas Reads a Child's Christmas in Wales and Five Poems/Cd (Audio CD)

Growing up, my father had a copy of the original vinyl recording of this from the 1950's. Every Christmas it came out and was played, and now I can't think of Christmas without it. After being unavailable for decades, I'm delighted to see this record once again available. Few people know that Dylan Thomas gained fame in his lifetime as a radio personality, and the dry, droll voice of his takes his fantastic prose and breathes a life into it that the simple words themselves cannot demonstrate. A classic, recommended to all.