-
The Enchanted Castle
- Narrated by: Johanna Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
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Publisher's summary
"I haven't had anything to eat for a hundred years," said the Princess, whose name was Mabel, and she invited them into her castle to share her repast, though strangely enough the only food she could offer was bread and cheese and water! Next she led them to her treasure chamber and showed them all her jewels, removing their last lingering doubts of the magic by putting on a ring of invisibility - and promptly disappearing!
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The Book of Ebenezer le Page
- By: G. B. Edwards
- Narrated by: Roy Dotrice
- Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late 20th century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between England and France yet a world away from either. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent, but as he reaches the end of his life he is determined to tell his own story and the story of those he has known.
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I miss Ebenezer
- By Mel on 01-15-18
By: G. B. Edwards
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Lark Rise
- By: Flora Thompson
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
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Lark Rise is Flora Thompson's childhood memories of a north Oxfordshire village, the people who lived and worked in it, and a way of life that has totally disappeared. The story is built around Laura and her brother Edmund, through whose eyes are seen 'old Sally', whose grandfather built the house she lived in before the enclosure of the heathland, children's games, the interaction of village and gentry, and the way in which the seasons governed life.
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A glimpse...
- By Shananiganians on 05-31-20
By: Flora Thompson
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Father
- By: Elizabeth Von Arnim
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Since her mother's death, Jennifer has devoted years of her life to her father, managing the family home. After the sudden announcement that he has taken a new wife, Jennifer, at 33, seizes the opportunity to lead an independent life. Quickly she secures the lease of Rose Cottage and turns her attention to her own interests. While Jennifer is desperate to experience life on her own terms within her reduced financial means, her neighbour, Alice, is pre-occupied with ensuring her position as head of her brother's household is never challenged.
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Worse Audio Book I Have Ever Heard
- By Phyllis Woodford on 11-05-21
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High Rising
- A Virago Modern Classic
- By: Angela Thirkell, Alexander McCall Smith - introduction
- Narrated by: Jilly Bond
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Successful lady novelist Laura Morland and her boisterous young son, Tony, set off to spend Christmas at her country home in the sleepy surrounds of High Rising. But Laura's wealthy friend and neighbor, George Knox, has taken on a scheming secretary whose designs on marriage to her employer threaten the delicate social fabric of the village.
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Beginning of a journey
- By Jerri C on 11-04-16
By: Angela Thirkell, and others
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The Phantom Coach
- A Connoisseur's Collection of the Best Victorian Ghost Stories
- By: Michael Sims
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula’s Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity’s oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising and often legendary cast, including Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W. F. Harvey. Amelia B. Edwards’s chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell ("The Old Nurse’s Story"), and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey’s Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.
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Excellent Narration and Great Selection of Stories
- By Robert on 05-03-15
By: Michael Sims
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Jenny
- By: Sigrid Undset
- Narrated by: K. G. Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
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Jenny is the story of Jenny Winge, a talented Norwegian painter who lives a free and independent life in Rome. Betraying her own ideals, she has an affair, resulting in a child out of wedlock, and decides to raise the child on her own. Undset gives a gripping portrayal of a woman struggling towards fulfillment and independence, who at the same time wrestles with mental problems. It is written with unflinching honesty, which makes her story as compelling today as it was nearly a century ago.
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Undset is an Astute Observer of Human Nature
- By Amazon Customer on 08-05-17
By: Sigrid Undset
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What listeners say about The Enchanted Castle
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- C. Gatzman
- 02-06-21
A wonderful discovery, give it a chance!
I am so glad that I decided to purchase this book! It was a wonderfully delightful story that will now be included with my favorite classics such as C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series. The story is full of fun and humor as you follow the misadventures of four children and a magic ring. The Narrator is also particularly good and did a perfectly wonderful job telling the story.
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- Shy Honey
- 07-13-17
meh
struggled to finsh this one. normally I do my best to finsh a series or a single novel before casting a judgement. I just couldn't stay intrested in this one.
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- Aliesha Caldwell
- 05-19-20
Favorite book in the world!! I love it!
I love it lots I love it lots I love it lots I love it lots I love it lots I love it because it's so nice!
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- Molly
- 02-06-12
Wonderful!
What made the experience of listening to The Enchanted Castle the most enjoyable?
Just loved this book and the narration is wonderful. My 5 and 7 year old children enjoyed this book.
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12 people found this helpful
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- SEE
- 10-08-17
An E Nesbit classic!
performance is exceptional! the characters come alive with Johanna ward's excellent narration. worth every penny
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3 people found this helpful
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- Grant & Aila G.
- 06-15-23
Delightful!
This whole story was magical, sweet, and full of hilarious moments. I loved the reader and absolutely everything she brought to the story! The children are so adorable!
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- Jefferson
- 12-30-23
A Comical, Scary, Sublime, and Imperfect Fantasy
The heroes of E. Nesbitt’s fantasy novel The Enchanted Castle (1907), Gerald (Jerry), Kathleen (Kathy/Cat), and James (Jimmy) are three British West Country siblings who go to unisex boarding schools and can only meet on the weekends at some house where they can't play (“You know the kind of house” says the narrator). Luckily one thing leads to another, and the boys get to spend the holiday at Kathleen's girls’ school in Littlesby while all the other girls are gone. The kids are wanting an adventure—Kathleen even suggests writing a book, but the boys refuse that fatiguing work—when out hunting caves in the woods they stumble upon (and into) one that leads to what appears to be an enchanted castle with an enchanted garden with an enchanted princess lying there waiting to be kissed awake. Princess, garden, and castle all turn out to be not exactly enchanted in the way the kids (and reader) were expecting.
The ensuing plot has the kids making a good new friend in Mabel Prowse, the daughter of the housekeeper of Yalding Towers, the estate the kids found, and getting to know through increasingly fraught trial and error the properties of what turns out to be a tricky magic ring. Is it a ring of invisibility? Or a wishing ring? Or whatever one wants it to be? Like certain other later more famous magic rings, this one has a tendency to drop off your finger at unexpected moments and to seduce you into using it the wrong way.
**You can see the influence Nesbit must have had on C. S. Lewis here: two boys and two girls having fantastic adventures driven by magical artifacts, marked by the interface between the “real” world and fantasy, and flavored by pagan deities (though Nesbitt blessedly is not writing Christian allegory).
There’s lots of fantasy in the novel! Comedy scenes, like Gerald disguising himself in brown-face to become an India Indian conjurer at the town fair (this is offensive today). Disturbing horror developments, as when an audience fashioned from coats, pillows, broomsticks, and hats comes to life as “Ugly-Wuglies,” or as when to prove a point Mabel (foolishly!) wishes the ring made people four yards tall, or as when Kathleen (foolishly!) wishes she could be a statue, or as when James (foolishly!) wishes he were rich. Interspersed through the disturbing moments shine sublime ones, like a celestial picnic featuring animated statues of pagan gods and a moment of total revelation and understanding outside time and space and without need of words, when it seems “that the whole world lay like a magic apple in the hand of each listener and that the whole world was good and beautiful.”
Throughout all of the fantasy, Nesbit runs her “realism,” which involves giving plenty of money and food details, demystifying or mundaning certain fantasy elements (like sleeping beauties and enchanted castles) while freshly and imaginatively utilizing others (like magic rings), and frequently addressing her readers to for instance challenge them to do things like make their own Ugly-Wuglies to see how scary they can really be and generally to pose as a real person who’d met the siblings and gotten their story from them (she archly tells us that she believes everything she’s been told, including the story we’re reading). She also uses relatable similes, like “... looking as unreal as the wrong answer to a sum in long division.” And she has her kids use then current British slang, like “I've had a rum dream,” and “What a ripping book!” and refer to then popular literature like Sherlock Holmes.
She also inserts at one point an American millionaire who, suitably, likes saying “great” and shooting his gun (which he lovingly carries on his person).
Gerald is a neat character, good at currying favor with adults by being attentive and polite to them, a natural born general who takes charge of the other kids and bucks them up when their morale flags, an articulate lad who likes narrating their activities as though he’s the narrator of an adventure novel as well as its hero, with the other kids being his minions. The other kids are not as interesting but still individual enough. There are points where they do unbelievably stupid and out of character (the kids are anything but stupid) things with the ring to create suspenseful complications.
Johanna Ward gives a fine reading of the Audiobook.
Unfortunately, Nesbit shoves into the story an unconvincing and excrescent fairy tale-like romance involving the French governess “Mademoiselle” who’s supposedly keeping an eye on the kids during their holidays. And, like Gerald posing as an Indian conjurer, some things don’t wear well today, as in lines like, “Even though you’re French you must know that British gentlemen always keep their word.”
But the novel is worth reading for psychologically interesting and true moments like when the kids reveal their awareness that grownups play with them to please them without knowing that kids play with them to please them, and for some potent fantasy writing, like this:
"There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. And when once people have found one of the little weak spots in that curtain which are marked by magic rings, and amulets and the like, almost anything may happen."
And like this:
“The two little girls kissed in the kind darkness, where the visible and the invisible could meet on equal terms.”
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- Eliza
- 12-31-20
Enchanting indeed
This is a classic tale of magic and adventure mixed with ordinary life of late 19th century children. It is very much of the time when it was written, but is nevertheless charming and occasionally spooky as well.
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- Crister M
- 06-20-21
Beautiful Children’s Tale
Very creative and entertaining story that is sure to delight your kids (and you)! Nicely recorded and easy to follow.
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- Ijw
- 11-04-21
better than most fairy tales
probably good bedtime reading for young readers. moral lessons and all. some scary parts but quickly resolved.
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