Category Archives: Audio narration

“The Game Made,” a “Tell” Chapter from A Tale of Two Cities (Book the Third, Chapter Nine)

Audio narration

In this chapter of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Darnay is sentenced to death on the accusations of the Dafarges and, incredibly, Dr. Manette, in the form of an old condemnation by the prisoner in the Bastille long before he knew Charles. Sydney Carton persuades Jarvis Lorry to rap up affairs in Paris and prepare to leave at once with Lucy, Little Lucy, Miss Pross and presumably the freed Charles Darnay.  But Carton asks Lorry to keep his safe passage pass with him for when the man arrives at the last minute.  Lorry knows that escape is impossible, but his new-found respect for Sydney assures himself that there is method in this madness.  Carton has made the game by chapter’s end–and has sealed his own fate.

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A Most Difficult Chapter from “A Tale of Two Cities”

Audio narration

“A Hand at Cards,” Book Three, Chapter Eight of A Tale of Two Cities.  Here many of the characters in the novel are on stage in one chapter.  Carton reappears and must “turn” the spy John Barsad to his purposes.  Pross and Cruncher are “over the top,” as usual, but Carton is another matter entirely. He must be played with great skill, conveying both his quickness of mind and his moral regeneration believably. In fact, he rises almost to the level of scrubbed purity as Lucy Manette. And yet, he must be a believable character. You be the judge if I have succeeded.  One thing that is sure, it is exhausting.

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“The Grindstone,” from A Tale of Two Cities

Audio narration

Another entry in my evolving audio narration of Charles Dickens’s magisterial novel, A Tale of Two Cities.  This chapter is called “The Grindstone.”  It is a difficult chapter to read because it involves characters of different sexes exchanging dialogue quickly and in states of duress.  Unlike other chapters where the characters are over the top in the writing, and where as a result the dialogue can be read in a similar fashion, here the pathos must be presented sympathetically with a minimum of melodrama.  I hope I have succeeded!

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Newest Episode: “Fire Rising,” Chapter 29 from A Tale of Two Cities

Audio narration

In this episode, the mansion of the Marquis St. Evremonde goes up in flames as the Revolutionary mob torches the ancestral home of Charles Darnay (secretly the new Marquis).  The old Marquis’s functionary, Gabelle, is, in consequence, about to be arrested.   This will draw Darnay from safety in England to mortal peril in France, as he will decide to journey to Paris–and possible imprisonment and death–to save his friend, Gabelle.

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