Audiobook reviews: Thandie Newton reads Jane Eyre; obscure early Jane Austen work is flawed
Newton can’t compete with the sheer velvety smoothness of Juliet Stevenson’s 2009 reading of the Charlotte Brontë classic, but she sounds more convincing as Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë (read by Thandie Newton)
Audible Studios
4/5 stars
Earlier this month, I reviewed Juliet Stevenson’s superb reading of Jane Eyre from 2009. I should have waited a little longer. The bicentenary of Charlotte Bronte’s birth is not only giving Shakespeare 400 a run for its money, it has inspired a new audiobook by A-listish actress Thandie Newton, who herself gave Tom Cruise a run for his money in Mission Impossible II.
While her voice can’t quite compete with Stevenson’s for sheer velvety smoothness, she possibly sounds more convincing as Jane Eyre. Her voice is more brittle and delicate, yet with an unmistakable steel and determination. Her reading is fluent and extremely easy on the ear, although she tends to approach gravitas (in the description of a snowy counterpane for example) where perhaps none exists, or not yet. This works splendidly when she teases out Jane’s own unease later in the ‘Red Room’: ‘The room was chill, because it seldom has a fire.’ Newton stresses ‘chill’, then pauses, allowing the listener to consider whether the room’s chilliness is due to spookier reasons than the lack of fire. The real test for Newton is Rochester, whose jesting flippancy regularly verges on the cruel. Newton does just fine, underplaying rather than attempting her own Timothy Dalton. An attractive, if not quite great reading.
