Audiobook (abridged)11 hours
Our Mutual Friend
Written by Charles Dickens
Narrated by David Timson
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Out of the dust-heaps and dirty streets of mid-Victorian London Dickens creates a classic murder-mystery tale. A dead man is fished out of the Thames by a scavenger and his daughter. Who is he, and how did he get there? His death affects members of all levels of a society permeated by greed. Dickens presents an array of characters both touching and humorous from Mr. Boffin, the ‘Golden’ Dustman, to Jenny Wren the lame doll’s dress-maker. It is a story enriched by disguise and intrigue, whilst the River Thames, symbolising both polluted and renewed life weaves through it all, in this, the last novel Dickens completed.
Author
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.
More audiobooks from Charles Dickens
A Vintage Christmas: A Collection of Classic Stories and Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Classic Christmas: A Collection of Timeless Stories and Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Christmas Classics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Christmas Carol Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to Our Mutual Friend
Related audiobooks
Our Mutual Friend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Pair of Blue Eyes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Old Curiosity Shop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bleak House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nicholas Nickleby Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Dorrit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mystery of Edwin Drood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woodlanders Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Martin Chuzzlewit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pickwick Papers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barnaby Rudge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tess of the d'Urbervilles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dombey and Son Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moll Flanders Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5David Copperfield: Part 1 and 2 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Vanity Fair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catriona Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cranford Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mayor of Casterbridge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hard Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Far from the Madding Crowd Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Oliver Twist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Moonstone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waverley Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mill on the Floss Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lorna Doone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Professor Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ethan Frome Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Return of the Native Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trumpet-Major Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Classics For You
The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Old Man and the Sea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crucible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frankenstein Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Their Eyes Were Watching God Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Sherlock Holmes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: A New Translation by Caroline Alexander Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perks of Being a Wallflower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Atlas Shrugged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fountainhead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Series of Unfortunate Events #1 Multi-Voice, A: The Bad Beginning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5War & Peace - Volume I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Schindler's List Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Thousand Ships: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stone Blind: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Gatsby Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Around the World in 80 Days: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/520,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Name of the Rose Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Tale of Two Cities Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prince: Machiavelli Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For Whom the Bell Tolls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Our Mutual Friend
Rating: 4.167243219146482 out of 5 stars
4/5
867 ratings32 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Whew! Epic, amazing, messy book. I'm glad I re-read it, and I'm glad I've finished re-reading it.
LIZZIE EUGENE FOREVER. - Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5There is something wrong with this recording. About half through it began looping a few paragraphs over and over. As a result parts of the book were not read, and the recording stopped short of the actual ending. It’s too bad. Without this problem it would have been another entertaining reading of an interesting Dickens novel. I will try the alternative recording available in Scribed.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5David Timson is a wonderful reader. Each character is beautifully brought to life.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The reader is excellent, but the sound files aren't intact. Several spots repeat paragraphs.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This audiobook was wonderful, but it was broken. On several occasions it repeated over and over the same chapter or several minutes of the story and it never finished telling the story, ending at chapter 117 instead of 120 or whatever it should have gone to. Very frustrating!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I loved this book, until the ending, which disappointed.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The whole time I was reading this, I felt like I was reading a book that had a prequel to it that I had Missed reading. This was Dicken's intention, as he relates in the postscript. It works well, to keep the reader trying to puzzle out the mystery. A master of characterization, Dickens will have you switching your loyalty back and forth between who you love, who you hate, and who you are holding off judgement, chapter by chapter. In the end, you'll be saying, "I should have known." I like how Dickens used his considerable platform to raise Society's awareness of the plight of those who would be ensnared by Poorhouse laws.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Usually it takes a bit to get into a Dickens novel but once I'm in I enjoy them. That was not the case here. I kept reading, but never really got interested in the characters or the various plots. A miss for me, alas.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Really hard to read
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Well, it's Dickens, and I truly wonder after reading this last book in his corpus, what his writing could have been had he not been writing as a serialist. This book is deeper than most, and includes biting satire of the wealthy who inherit their monies as a matter of course. And it delves again into the role that poverty plays in family dysfunction. I guess Dickens saw these two extremes from his personal life and brought their realities to his vast group of readers. Some of the more interesting characters are Betty Higden and poor Johnny, whose close and cloying relationship, well, Betty Higden describes why she has been withholding Johnny from an infirmary better than I ever will. And Dickens introduces the Jewish Mr. Riah as a battered but ultimately good man. And Jenny Wren is a smart, resourceful young woman who shields those whom she loves and scolds her drunkard father as only a daughter can.While there are elements of the plot that are a bit far-fetched, even for the times in which they were written, the character drawing that Dickens does here is still first-rate. But it's still a serialized novel that really would have benefitted from editing had that been available.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How I avoided reading so many Dickens novels as an English major in college I do not understand, but I am grateful to whoever donated a set of Dickens novels to the free bin at my local library, because thanks to that donation I managed to read Dombey and Son, Nicholas Nickleby and now Our Mutual Friend. The last is a superb novel, even though one thinks one knows the plot twist early on. Well, it is a plot twist but Dickens has much more in store. A wonderful, surprising novel.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A darker story than earlier Dickens (This was his last completed novel). A body is fished out of the Thames and that starts the tale, but it spins off in many directions before, of course, coming back to that original body.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Too long. Wikipedia descriptions of characters was useful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of my favorites. First read it on a train. Beginning of my love affair with Dickens. Read it this time on my kindle.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I would have given this 5 stars except that there were certain passages (too many in my opinion) which were too obviously Dickens getting on his soapbox and not really relevant to the story. Dickens does this in most (all?) of his novels and I have often enjoyed the sarcastic wit in these asides but for some reason, I found them less funny and more bitter in this novel & therefore less enjoyable. (I will try to track down some examples to include here later)The plot itself I loved. It had all the twists and turns and branches that I appreciate so much in Dickens as well as the wonderful cast of characters. The only thing missing was one or two "light relief" eccentric but harmless characters such as Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield although I suppose Jenny Wren & Mr. Tremlow do fulfill that function to some extent. I was pleased to find that Mr. Boffin hadn't been corrupted by wealth after all. One of my favorite chapters in the last book was the one where the truth is revealed to Bella and then to Silas Wegg. And I loved the happy endings all around with even Eugene Wraeburn surviving and turning over a new leaf once he was married to Lizzie.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moody, dense look at Dickens's London characters. The city and river as wonderful characters.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Very difficult to get into and several extraneous characters who did little to move the plot forward. But the many threads came together nicely and happy endings were in store for most. As this was the last completed novel of Dickens, it struck me that he was yearning for a happy ending for himself at that point in his life.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quite a typical Dickens; full of humour, satirical, and a great read.I very much enjoyed it and liked the story a lot; I enjoyed the different characters, who are all in a way charicatures of the type of people they represent. I found it a bit hard at the beginning, especially because there are a lot of different characters introduced, but I really got drawn into it. It's a book that really makes you feel for the people in it, it gives you a sense that you are close to them and makes you wish for the best for all of the nice people, and wish for something dreadful to happen to the bad people...With a twist at the end, Dickens manages to do just that: the bad people are punished, the good are rewarded and live happily ever after. Though I found the ending somewhat unlikely, it did make for a nice twist to the story, and it was certainly unexpected.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An excellent story, though it does drag a bit in parts. I saw the BBC TV production which I loved before reading the book and may have found the written version a little lackluster in terms of character development compared to the TV version. It is a very good story, likely with more elements of surprise if you haven't seen it first.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This rivals Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities as my favorite Dickens, though now I want to reread Hard Times and Bleak House to make sure.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wacky, moving, and generally delightful! This novel has sold me on Dickens.
Similarly to The Mill on the Floss, this novel makes bitter that I cannot go find a Dickens fandom on the Internet. English class is good and all, but there's much less in the way of squeeing. I guess I will simply have to force everyone I know to read it.... - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It took me 5 weeks to read the first 300 pages, and then a week to finish the last 500. Oh Dickens, why did you get paid by the word? I didn't think he would ever stop introducing new characters, but being Dickens, he brought it all together beautifully. I found one of the most interesting characters to be the schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone. Generally Dickens is very black and white in his characters, and the schoolmaster is a pretty black character, but he was more pathetic in his blackness instead of pure evil. I even found myself sympathizing with him a little bit. And, as usual with Dickens, I'm really glad I kept reading.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Our Mutual Friend is my new favorite book. This is the last novel Dickens completed before he died, and critics seem to agree it is his most mature. The river Thames plays such a major role in the novel that it is almost a character; it is the scene of many of the novel's major events, including five drownings and one resurrection. There is a dead miser, an expatriated son who apparently drowns in his way to claim his inheritance, and two beautiful women who are sought after by various deserving and undeserving characters. For the panorama of human vice and virtue, Dickens cannot be bested. I read this novel slowly, in part because I really didn't want it to end.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wonderfully illustrated. By far the best. Charles Dickens classic written.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Time has slipped away from me on reviewing this book, so I'll be briefer than I meant.This is very Dickensish Dickens indeed. He delves into the littlest-known professions of London's economic underbelly, makes endless and intricate mock of the empty hearts and minds of the money- and status-obsessed nouveau riche, weaves a terrifically complicated plot, and engages in all the heart-rending melodrama for which you either hate or love him. He makes some amends here -- Riah, a noble Jewish character unable to escape the stereotypes others lay on him seems a clear apologia for Fagin. Jenny Wren's complex and fallible character may comfort a few who find the saintly Tiny Tim, Dickens's most famous disabled child, hard to take. (Jenny Wren has her twee moments as well: troops of angels visiting her in her worst childhood moments, Boz? Really?)The story is sprawling, of course, but its central theme is the corrupting effect of money. I found the central story and the characters of the Boffins effective and surprisingly poignant. The nouveau riche storyline, featuring the Veneerings and Lammles, was the least appealing to me. The descriptions of the Veneerings and their doings were so stylized as to occasionally lose focus, I thought, and I found Georgiana Podsnap frustrating to the point of apathy. This is late Dickens, and while as I say his melodramatic tendencies are in full force, there are more variations in moral fabric, more surprises about people's true natures and capacities, than I feel I find in some of his earlier novels. It's a rich book, full of unhappy love, fierce determination, human folly, and of course startling evocations of Victorian London. It's huge and complicated, but full of memorable images and people. A necessity for Dickens lovers.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Certainly my favourite Dickens, and one of my favourtie books ever. Eugene Wrayburn is brilliant, Bradley Headstone truly disturbed and disturbing. It's incredible how Dickens managed to draw the character with such small actions. All the characters are drawn perfectly and the plot is wonderfully intricate and absorbing. It is difficult to get into and you might wonder what it's all about to start with, but it's worth sticking with!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A bit dull for Dickens. Read something else of his!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I enjoyed this Dickens immensely and read it just before the brilliant TV drama adaptation came out. David Morrisey is Bradley Headstone (the creepy infactuated teacher), one of the McGanns is the love interest and 'Miss Toner' of Tutti Frutti is the crippled ?seamstress...I've forgotten now! Anyway book and TV drama fantastic.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Have tried Dickens before and had a hard time getting through it, but this one was wonderful, I didn't want the story to end.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Narrator (Robert Whitfield a/k/a Simon Vance) does an excellent job with the many voices. 31 hours makes for a very long book, so I stopped halfway to listen to a completely different book, and came back to this one after that. An awful lot of sub-plots, that are (for the most part) well-resolved by the end.