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    The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
    Unavailable
    The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
    Unavailable
    The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
    Audiobook4 hours

    The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

    Written by Evelyn Waugh

    Narrated by Simon Prebble

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Gilbert Pinfold is a reclusive Catholic novelist suffering from acute inertia. In an attempt to defeat insomnia he has been imbibing an unappetizing cocktail of bromide, chloral, and creme de menthe. He books a passage on the SS Caliban and, as it cruises towards Ceylon, rapidly slips into madness.

    Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, and loud revival meetings. He is convinced that an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship...until instead of just sounds he hears voices. And not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frighteningly intimate way, about him!

    A Hachette Audio production.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateDec 11, 2012
    ISBN9781619693982
    Unavailable
    The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
    Author

    Evelyn Waugh

    Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) estudió historia moderna en Oxford, donde llevó, según sus palabras, una vida de "pereza, disolución y derroche". Publicó en 1928 su primera novela, "Cuerpos viles", "¡Noticia bomba!" y "Merienda de negros", publicadas en esta colección, que le establecieron como el novelista cómico inglés más considerabe desde Dickens. Después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el influjo de su conversión al catolicismose hizo muy acusado; destacan entre las obras de dicho periodo "Retorno a Brideshead", la trilogía "La espada del honor" y también "Los seres queridos", en la que regresó a la veta satírica de sus primeras novelas.

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    Reviews for The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

    3.5/5

    94 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Lacks the hilarity of Waugh's other dark comedies, and is repetitive and predictable across large sections. However it retains some interest for historical and psychological reasons. As it is at least semi-autobiographical we get some insight into Waugh's own later life, and his period of mental breakdown. His delusions and paranoia provide the main stock of humour here, though this mainly falls flat. Not a classic.
    • 3/5
      Rather an odd book, really, and not by any means my favorite Waugh novel. Funny in parts, but more often just something of a slog.
    • 3/5
      This turned up on the audiobook shelves at the library; I recognized the title from my parents' shelves, so I thought why not? It's all rather English, borrowing from stereotype here and lending itself to stereotype over there. There's not much drama, since the reader (listener) knows perfectly well that Waugh's stand-in Pinfold is suffering from hallucinated voices while on a long cruise; the melodrama he imagines is nearly without consequence, except on the few occasions when Pinfold threatens to act in the real world based on the misinformation in his head. Fortunately (for himself; unfortunately for the reader) he never really does much except send alarming telegrams to his wife and change his tickets for an earlier return.

      But the audiobook reader (Michael Cochrane) does an excellent job bringing all those voices to life, with distinct tones and accents, and the result is not unlike an old-fashioned radio play. I doubt I've learned any profound life lessons, but I did enjoy myself for 5 hours.
    • 2/5
      Some people can only read a book if they know that the events it describes 'really happened.' I'm the other way round: if, as with OGP, the book fictionalizes actual events, I often get bored. There's a good reason for that--what I most appreciate in fiction is the distance between author, narrator and characters. When someone is describing what actually happened to him/her, all of that distance gets squished into a tiny, tiny little span, and I often end up feeling like the author is an idiot who's incapable of self-reflection.

      That's particularly sad in the case of Waugh, who often has great swathes of distance in his work. But here... well, I just can't help feeling like it's just a bunch of self pity. Had I come out of the book feeling like Waugh himself had learned from his Pinfoldian experience (i.e., that some of his various sillinesses were not harmlessly silly, but actually obnoxious), I might have had a better time. As it was, Pinfold comes out of it feeling like he's a superman who can defeat psychological disturbance with an apt phrase, and that therefore he's quite right to ignore the accusations leveled at him. Is that how Waugh felt? I can't help but believe that it was. If someone can convince me otherwise, I'd really appreciate it, because I suspect this book has made it much harder for me to go back and enjoy Waugh's earlier works.