Redburn

By: Herman Melville

Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne

Drawn from Melville's own adolescent experience aboard a merchant ship, Redburn charts the coming-of-age of Wellingborough Redburn, a young innocent who embarks on a crossing to Liverpool together with a roguish crew. Once in Liverpool, Redburn encounters the squalid conditions of the city and meets Harry Bolton, a bereft and damaged soul, who takes him on a tour of London that includes a scene of rococo decadence unlike anything else in Melvilles fiction. Redburn is not a document; it is a work of art by the unexpected genius of a sailor, Herman Melville.

Public Domain (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Lesser Melville Poorly Read

Melville learned to write Moby Dick after Hawthorne suggested he rework the draft. This was from the period before Melville found his miraculous calling. Some of the book is fine. The strange erudition of the hero conflated him with the author at odd times.

The reader is well intentioned but lazy. He mispronounces so many words, relying on glibness and bluster. He should look up any word he is unsure of. And there must be non director to police the work. Many dozens of mispronounced words Many. Too common nowadays

Melville Fan

It’s good enough. Not Moby Dick caliber, but interesting on certain parts. A sailor’s tale.

Classic Tale of Adventure … & Social Disparities

This is a fantastic adventure of a kid with wanderlust in 1839. However, Melville’s style of writing in that period which shifted from third to first person is strange by contemporary standards. His reflection on the plight of the world’s poor, including Irish immigrants that he witnessed suffering in steerage just a few few years before the potato famine, revealed the disdainful chasm between the rich & penniless in the mid 19th century.

Good reader

Good reader. Better at accents than more accomplished narrators. The book is simply awesome. Profound, yet accessible.

A funky autobiographical novel/bildungsroman

It must be awful as a writer to dash off a novel for money or tobacco in a couple of weeks and have it praised, but see your earlier serious novel (Mardi) panned, and your later novel (Moby-Dick) under-appreciated until years after your death. That is the genius of a select group of writers -- they are destined to exist in this weird space between art and the public. Perhaps the strong bitter of Melville's art was just too early and too strange for the public, but they WERE ready for his swipes.

If you are into literature of the sea (The Sea Wolf, The Pilot, Captains Courageous, etc.,) or you are just into Melville, you will want to read this. If, however, this is your first Melville, I'd stick with Moby-Dick.