Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King

Written by Stephen King
Read by Frances Sternhagen
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: HighBridge Company
Release date: August 4, 2008
Original release date: 1992
Duration: 09:15:47

One woman’s narrative traversing thirty years between two mysterious deaths.

Dolores Claiborne’s elderly employer dies suddenly, apparently from falling down a flight of stairs. This tragedy sparks memories of the day Dolores’s husband died… the day of the total eclipse. Suspected by police and townspeople alike, she delivers a story of a disintegrating marriage, and the breaking point reached by a docile woman.

AaudioFile—
“Throughout a single, long night in the police chief’s office, Dolores Claiborne relates events leading to her murder of her husband and the recent suspicious death of her wealthy employer. The nine-hour, unrelieved monologue poses a special challenge to the reader/performer. Actress Frances Sternhagen portrays the sharp-tongued, foul-mouthed Dolores with expressive vigor but with limited emotional range and little variation in tempo. Sternhagen’s Downeast accent is convincing, although mispronunciations of “quahog” and “Machias” are annoying. Very occasional sound effects are puzzling and interrupt, rather than enhance, the storytelling. Nevertheless, King fans doubtless will enjoy hearing Dolores relate her complex and disturbing tale.”

Publishers Weekly liked the narrator…”With her small-town tone and pitch perfect dialect, Frances Sternhagen delivers a remarkable reading that is at once intimate yet extroverted. Sternhagen’s Claiborne is an everyday woman who has had it with her everyday life. With an unrelenting delivery that only gets better as the story moves forward, Sternhagen speaks from the heart and never sounds forced or manufactured. She also makes all the surrounding characters (from Dolores’s damaged daughter to her steely boss and a suspicious detective) completely well rounded and realistic. Sternhagen captures the very essence of what can turn a woman’s heart to hate and lets her audience feel it in their bones. Recorded in 1992”

Because the recording was made on tape and not edited before re-release, as noted above, it has flaws in the sound. Both Overdrive and Audible show the same. I have fixed a few.