Unabridged.
Laurence Sterne’s most famous novel is a biting satire of literary conventions and contemporary eighteenth-century values. Renowned for its parody of established narrative techniques, Tristram Shandy is commonly regarded as the forerunner of avant-garde fiction. Tristram’s characteristic digressions on a whole range of unlikely subjects (including battle strategy and noses!) are endlessly surprising and make this one of Britain’s greatest comic achievements. A cast of strange characters populate this strangest of novels: gentle Uncle Toby, sarcastic Walter and of course, the pompous, garrulous Tristram himself. This edition is read by Anton Lesser in a tour de force performance.
Reviews:
Nothing odd will do long, declared Dr Johnson in one of his most famous dud verdicts. Tristram Shandy did not last. The cock-and-bull story by Laurence Sterne has, in its author’s words, somehow managed to swim down the gutter of Time from its first, sensational publication in 1759. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman has inspired and provoked writers as various as Dickens, Joyce and Salman Rushdie. At more than 500 p., it is the perfect holiday read and Naxos audiobooks has just released an unabridged version, read by Anton Lesser with humour and brio. Lesser’s light tenor is perfectly suited to the many roles (Parson Yorick, Doctor Slop, et al.) who crowd Sterne’s narrative. This translates into 15 CDs and about 19 hours of listening. Perfect for a wet summer.
- Robert McCrum, The Observer
‘I have never done anything so hard’ a very pale Anton Lesser is said to have declared on completing his brilliant new recording of ‘Tristram Shandy’. A classic actor who’s voiced everyone from Homer to Hamlet, Lesser seems only to open his mouth for wisdom to come out. But then the problems with performing Laurence Sterne’s eighteenth-century classic of comic metafiction are well rehearsed. As sidetracks sprout from sidetracks, keeping up with the garrulous hero’s chaotic autobiography is one thing. But how the hell are you supposed to read out loud a blank page, or a squiggle? Here sound effects place you firmly at Shandy’s writing desk, while Lesser’s unflaggingly engaged reading insists on the vivid characterisation beneath the stylistic play.
- Bella Todd, TimeOut
When I’m in London during the summer, I don’t have the car. This is liberating to an extent, but does mean that I can’t listen to Tristram Shandy. I bought the unabridged 15-CD set at the best possible place – Shandy Hall, Laurence Sterne’s home at Coxwold, in Yorkshire. On visiting, I became uncomfortably aware that I’d never managed to get through any Sterne. Anton Lesser reads Tristram to perfection. By the time I’d driven back to Ramsgate the next day, I had heard 10 CDs, but what about the remainder? My ears are the wrong shape for an iPod; the little earphones fall out. I can’t expect the family to share Sterne in the car. Besides, is he suitable for children? Eventually, they may take to him more quickly than me always going off at a tangent, with no obvious beginning, middle and end, Tristram should appeal to the internet generation. It was a long journey home, because the A1 was jammed. I was amazed to see people turning round and going up a slip road the wrong way in order to escape the hold-up. A lorry driver at the top tried to block them all right, but us cars simply went round onto the verge. How very Italian we’ve become.
- Clive Aslet, Town Mouse Country Life
As a general rule I go along with the advice that if a book doesn’t grab you by the end of chapter 4, don’t waste your time, there are plenty more. Yes, but not like Tristram Shandy. Nothing I’ve ever come across is like Sterne’s extraordinary comic tour de force published 250 years ago which, I freely admit, I found pretty hard going a long way past chapter 4
And then, suddenly, I got it. Or at least I realised I was coming at it from the wrong direction. It isn’t a novel. It has no plot. Chapters break off in mid-sentence because, advises the narrator, ‘I would not give a groat for that man’s knowledge in pen-craft who does not understand this: That the best plain narrative in the world, tacked very close to the last spirited apostrophe to my Uncle Toby, would have felt both cold and vapid upon the reader’s palate; therefore I forthwith put an end to the chapter, though I was in the middle of my story.’ And which story might that have been? The one about Uncle Toby’s dalliance with the widow Wadman? Or his manservant Corporal Trim’s tireless reconstructions of Flanders campaigns, complete with battering rams and catapults on the bowling green behind the vegetable garden? Or of Dr Slop, summoned to assist at the narrator’s birth, being thrown from his horse and . Enough. If you’ve ever sat spellbound listening to a witty, satirical, outrageous, digressive raconteur regaling you with endless stories about preposterous characters that lead nowhere but keep you hanging on every word, trust me – they learned their craft from Sterne. So did postmodernists such as James Joyce and Flann O’Brien. It is tailor-made for audio, as is Anton Lesser’s reading – intelligent, humorous, charming. Dr Johnson admired the book enormously, but opined that ‘nothing odd will do long’. For once he was wrong. Tristram Shandy is decidedly odd and extremely long, but it has stayed the course.
- Sue Arnold, The Guardian