Twain's basic point that upbringing is everything is portrayed in this dark and complex satire on people's inability to see beyond racial stereotypes. Ray Verna's fully voiced recording is of consistently good quality in audio production and reader performance. While Twain's work is often performed in an older, crotchety voice, Verna interprets with a smoother, more standard voice, more appropriate for the character of twenty-five-year-old David Wilson. Verna is also effective characterizing the desperate and shrewd Roxy, no doubt helped by Twain's phonetically written black dialect. Verna understands the story well and is sincere in his delivery. This is the audio equivalent of attending good amateur theater where earnestness counts, and small deficiencies are overlooked. P.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
At the beginning of
Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels. On its surface,
Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery: reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution. Yet it is not a mystery novel. Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes. Written in 1894,
Pudd'nhead Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony: a gem among the author's later works.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
