Customer Reviews

Grace (Commuter's Library S.)

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Richard Setlock truly has the best approach to these short stories of Mr Joyce from the Dubliners short story collection.

Setlock maintains a restraint, controlled tone, understatement, almost soothing (while wearily real), intimate, never irritating, that withstands repeated listening. In fact, after hearing anyone else read these same works, you will rush back to these increasingly difficult to find recordings from Setlock and the Commuter's Library series of three collections of the entire Dubliners (Norton Critical Edition).

This grouping entitled Grace contains the middle to later stories in the collection. The collection which follows contains Ivy Day and the Dead. These tales are of special interest as the Public Life stories.

But I have not come to comment upon the collection of tales in themselves, as there are several other far more insightful, scholarly, coherent and careful studies. I merely recommend you hear them here, by Setlock, and promise you to these tapes you will always return, above any other recording, including by the noted "celebrity" voices available elsewhere. The others will quickly grow overdone, highly dramatized, irritating. These are to hear forever.

The greatest drawback of course is that they are not commercially available in digital format, only on these analogue tapes. And how cool is that, too!

These restrained and listenable tapes even make the great Donal Donnely's careful recording of Ulysses seem overwrought and off-key!