Lisa Barger

I think most people, if they stop to think about it, understand that when you listen to an audio book you’re not really hearing the author’s book. What you’re actually hearing is the narrators interpretation of the author’s book. Hopefully, that interpretation falls in line with the author’s vision–and the readers’ expectations–but what if the audio performance so dramatically changes the story that your perception of it is forever altered?

Such was the case for me this autumn when I listened to the audio performance of the 1941 novel Now, Voyager by Olive Higgins Prouty.

Now, Voyager is a familiar story for me. I’ve read the novel once and seen the 1942 film based on the novel 5 or 6 times. I thought I knew the main character, Charlotte Vale, pretty well.

Then I listened to the audiobook.

Now, the narration I listened to wasn’t especially great. There were, as several readers point out in their own Audible reviews, some jarring mispronunciations and the male voices were especially poorly performed. But, for me, it was the way the narrator voiced Charlotte that caused me to reconsider just how well I really knew Charlotte Vale, after all.

My idea of Charlotte was based on Bette Davis’s portrayal in the movie adaptation. And while her version of Charlotte was deeply damaged by her cloying, grasping mother, who was simultaneously disgusted by the daughter she never wanted and terrified of losing her, Davis’s Charlotte was never truly defeated.

The audiobook narrator, on the other hand, presented a Charlotte so helpless and ground down by her mother’s abuse that her transformation into the Charlotte who fell in love with Jerry just didn’t seem plausible. Instead of burned out by verbal abuse and emotional neglect, this Charlotte seems pathetically lost. Had I experienced this Charlotte before reading the novel or seeing the film, I suspect I’d have had little interest in doing either.

Now, Voyager is not a story I’m absolutely in love with, but it is one I return to time after time. But I suspect that the next time I run across the film version playing on my television, I’ll see it and its characters in an entirely new light.