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4 out of 5 stars
By
Miriam
on
08-02-14
Eccentric accents galore!
On one hand, I am just SO excited to finally have more of Ballard's work than 'Crash' and the odd short story on Audible that I'm not even going to critique the story, except to say that the Amazon reviews generally raise valid points. I accept that this is probably not one of Ballard's stronger stories, but I think the social commentary is still interesting, and remarkably relevant - when one remembers this was first published in 1981 - especially the ecological aspects.
I enjoyed William Gaminara as a narrator, as I expected I would, but some of the accents made me cringe! This is not a criticism of Gaminara; I expect this was a directorial decision, and it was executed fine, but the accents unfortunately really detracted from the narration for me.
Overall, probably not the best choice for your first foray into Ballard on Audible: I see 'The Crystal World' is 'coming soon' (August 2014) and will be read by Sean Barrett - probably a better introduction to Ballard than 'Hello America'. For those already familiar with Ballard or with this story, I suppose it depends on whether you are a completist or not - if you didn't like this story on first reading, or prefer 1960s/70s Ballard, then this interpretation will probably not endear you to this tale.
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