Sylvester by Georgette Heyer

Sylvester unaNarrated by Nicholas Rowe

Unabridged

The works of Georgette Heyer are a little bit of an acquired taste. She’s considered the creator of the modern Regency romance genre, being an incredibly prolific author whose works were written between 1921 and 1972. (Not to be confused with Jane Austen who wrote novels during the Regency period, 1811-1820.)

She is noted for her thorough research in writing historical fiction as well, and the language is dense and rich in colloquialisms. If you like some meat in your historical romance – while still maintaining a wonderful sense of humor – then you must try her works. That being said, the language is also so dense and rich in colloquialisms that if you are not paying very close attention, and often even if you are, whole paragraphs will zing right over your head while you are wondering what the heck they are talking about!

This causes the reader holding a book or e-reader to regularly flip back a page or two to recreate the scene; in audio, this isn’t as easily accomplished. It takes an incredibly talented narrator to keep the words flowing and plot moving forward. Nicholas Rowe is an incredibly talented narrator.

Sylvester is a young duke who acquired his title at a very young age. He’s decided it is time to now acquire a wife to provide him with the usual heir-and-a-spare. His primary motivation: his brother died a few years earlier, leaving a son who is now Sylvester’s ward and heir; the sister-in-law is considering remarrying, and Sylvester feels he must raise his nephew himself if she remarries. Being the practical fellow he is, he has created a list of eligible females which he asks his godmother to approve.

Since Sylvester is an Heyer novel, and a light Regency, you can bet there is a totally ineligible female out there that he will meet. This is Phoebe Marlow, Sylvester’s godmother’s granddaughter – a young woman who has decided never to marry, but to support herself as an author of gothic romance novels. She has met Sylvester in the past and was so taken with his appearance (devilish eye brows) that she has cast his likeness in her latest book, The Lost Heir, some time before her grandmother decides to introduce them. She makes his character the wicked uncle whose young ward’s mother is the heroine – even though she had no idea that he even had a nephew. When she learns he is considering making an offer of marriage (and that her book’s character has more in common with the real duke than she imagined), she runs away rather than face him – and then hijinks ensue.

Back to the dense language and rich colloquialisms – I admit that I am totally on the fence on Heyer novels in general. The ones that seem the most popular – These Old Shades and Devil’s Cub – left me cold, but I liked The Corinthian, Venetia and The Grand Sophy. I do support the idea, in theory, of using language as it would have been spoken at the time, but in practice, I might be too lazy for it. It requires more participation as a reader/listener when whole sentences are made up of totally unfamiliar terms set in multiple clauses. Who did what to whom? Narrator Nicholas Rowe is a Scottish actor with years and years of acting experience, narrating his first audiobook. He handles the language with aplomb, tripping lightly over all those aforementioned colloquialisms as though he says those kinds of things every day. His voice is very easy on the ears, and his reading contains a lot of acting. My two issues with his narration concern acting decisions. While he has a wide array of voices, and differentiates them in various ways, he does not use pitch as an indicator between Sylvester and Phoebe. There are other, more subtle differences, but many, many times, in heated discussions between the two, I had no idea who was talking. The characters interrupt each other, which, as I’m not getting the visual of carriage returns and quotation marks, makes for confusion when the voices are so similar.

The other issue is speed. Again, this was an acting and directing decision: he has decided to make the characters talk very fast in several situations, so fast that he barely has time to take a breath in these long, long sentences. I understand it might be appropriate for the characters to be portrayed this way, but he uses speed as a vocal attribute often enough to wear me out. He has to sneak in rather rushed (and too loud) breaths to keep the pace going, and that, added to the often incomprehensible Heyer language, makes it that much harder to follow the thread. I think Rowe’s voice and acting experience make him a natural for audiobook narration, and I would love to hear him again. I just wish he had read a teensy bit slower in many scenes!

 

Melinda


Narration: B

Book Content: B

Steam Factor: You can definitely play it out loud

Violence: None

Genre: Historical romance

Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks

 

 

 

Sylvester was provided to AudioGals for review by Naxos Audiobooks.

2 thoughts on “Sylvester by Georgette Heyer

  1. I admit, I’m one who does enjoy the language in Heyer’s books, but I completely agree with you on the tempo issue – especially in the first few chapters, and about the lack of differentiation between the two leads in some scenes.

    But it’s a very accomplished reading, and I’d definitely have no problem listening to Nicholas Rowe again.

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