Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gorgeous voice, November 2, 2004
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.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An old tradition, November 11, 2001
By A Customer
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.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best of all having it read aloud to oneself, January 21, 2004
Who hasn't read this short tale of magic about Christmas past in a village in Wales, Dylan Thomas' most beloved book? I've read it to myself perhaps 20 times; I've read it to my children and laughed over the pictures maybe 10 more times. But, till now, I've never experienced the joy of hearing the poet himself read it to me. Omigod, what a pure pleasure. Recorded in 1952, this new release is all cleaned up and is a real keeper. Thomas' cadences, inflections, emphasis, pauses, and his marvelous Welsh accent make a listener close her eyes and just get lost in the humor and love and reminiscences of a bygone era.
There are quite a few other selections in this collection - and they're good - but even if you buy it just for A Child's Christmas in Wales, it'll be money well spent.
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