Great novel, production with some technical issues

The novel itself is excellent. The author writes in his preface (which for some reason is the very last chapter in this audio book): "In writing this book my intention was to present, in the form of an interesting story, a faithful picture of working-class life—more especially of those engaged in the Building trades—in a small town in the south of England." I lack the historical knowledge to judge the accuracy of this picture, but in my opinion the novel does a wonderful job of telling a believable story which provides insight into many aspects of how capitalism works (or perhaps I should say: how it worked in early 20th century English small towns). We see in vivid detail the roles that working men, management, capitalists and their respective families are assigned in this form of social organization.

Surely, quite a few things have changed since "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" was written. I suppose that a novel written today with the same purpose that Tressel set himself would have to be different in many ways. However, it seems to me that the basic mechanism of capitalism which Tressel's novel illustrates - that production depends on the desire and ability of entrepreneurs to employ labor in such a way that it is profitable for them - is still with us today, even if in "first world" countries the abject poverty depicted in the novel may be much rarer than it was at the beginning of the last century. Overall, I would highly recommend this work to anyone interested in a novel which skillfully mixes storytelling with social analysis. I would like to add that the seriousness of the topic does not mean that there are no opportunities for humor.

That said, I cannot recommend this particular production with the same enthusiasm. I really enjoyed the speaker's voice and accent and would say that he did a good job overall. However, there are a few issues that could have been improved upon such as occasional slips of the tongue or noticeable "seams" where segments have been pieced together rather than being recorded in one go. A slightly more substantial issue is that segments are sometimes repeated back to back. Usually, it is just a sentence or a few that are played twice, but there is one instance where the repeated segment is about ten to fifteen minutes long. While these phenomena are not that big of a problem, it is a bit annoying when they occur and it seems like they should have been easy to prevent.

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