Eight Cousins

or The Aunt Hill

By: Louisa May Alcott

Narrated by: Barbara Caruso

Recently orphaned, young Rose Campbell is sent to the "Aunt Hill", where Uncle Alex, her six aunts, and seven boy cousins live in noisy confusion. It is nothing like the quiet girls’ boarding school that has been Rose’s home for the past year. Surrounded by a bewildering array of pets, relatives, and unfamiliar foods, the fragile girl wonders if she will ever get used to this new life. Fortunately, Uncle Alex is her guardian. He keeps the aunts from coddling her too much, and makes sure that she has plenty of time to play outside with her cousins.

Day by day, learning how to care for each of these people, Rose begins to bloom. Eight Cousins is a charming introduction to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classics, which include Little Women and Little Men. Barbara Caruso’s colorful narration perfectly captures Rose and her extended family.

Public Domain (P)2002 Recorded Books

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I love it so much 💗 and you will want to never want it to end ❤️🧡💛💚💙🩵💜🩷🖤🤎🩶🤍

a wonderful old favorite

I really enjoyed the narration. The voices expressed emotions wonderfully without being overdone or awkward. The end of this book makes me want read the sequel.

enjoyable listen

i enjoyed the story and the performance. sweet lovely story. mostly ok for all ages- a few parts younger listeners might not understand, but nothing scary or inappropriate.

Genuinely Charming and Gentle Story

This is a charming and rather gentle story of an orphan that comes to lives in a big house with her two maiden aunts and her guardian uncle. Her uncle is a physician and sets about getting her healthy in a practical and wholesome way.

In this small community, she has other Aunts with boy sons, and all together they are "The Eight Cousins." There are small adventures and she sets about learning womanly skills as well as some more progressive skills for her time. There isn't a "big plot" as much as this is the story of Rose finding her place in the family.

The book's performance is more of a "reading" than a performance. There is no special effort to differentiate between male and female voices. It's well done, though, and seems very appropriate. It's a very low-stress listen. I played it for my daughter as a bedtime story, we listened to a chapter or two each evening, it was very enjoyable.

A glimpse of time and place

The language here reflects the time, place, social roles, and authors' beliefs. Some parts now seem eye rolling: discussions of cousins marrying, lower classes seen as "other", brief immigrant bashing. It's not horrible, or continuous: I just noted it, saw it as sign of different time, noted the distance we've come... and moved on.
AND the brief bashing was following kindness to and care of family and community that is prevalent among the characters.