Journey to the Center of the Earth: A Signature Performance by Tim Curry
UNABRIDGED
by Jules Verne
Narrated by Tim Curry
Length: 8 hrs 20 minutes

Editor Reviews
What strikes one immediately at the beginning of this story is its unexpected wit and sly satire. Classics tend to put people off as stodgy and dry. However, Tim Curry brings out a playfulness in Jules Verne's work that's too often missed. By the first few chapters, the audience should be quite enthralled with this band of travelers and their journey to come.

Big screen versions of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" have often been made, from the 1959 version with James Mason and Pat Boone to the recent 3D Brendan Fraser action film. So most people may, understandably, be confused by the novel’s original storyline. However, when you hear this performance you realize that Verne was a masterful and economic storyteller. He uses only two main speaking characters; Professor Lindenbrock and his nephew Alex, accompanied by their strong yet silent Icelandic guide. Their voyage is as much about the personal journey of the Professor and Alex as the actual trek through the Earth, and the story is often told through the inner thoughts of these main characters.

An exceptional showcase of Verne's words paired with Curry's narration is the chapter describing the raft trip across the expansive underground sea. There's a hint that something may be lurking in the waters and Alex starts to imagine prehistoric teeth and claws on nightmarish beasts. Curry's narration over this long building scene will make the hair rise on the back of your neck. You get so caught up in the imagined horror that when the monsters finally show up, they seem to pale in comparison to what Verne and Curry have created through the power of suggestion.
Curry unabashedly throws himself into the minor players while the main characters are superbly well studied and thoughtfully portrayed by this talented and seasoned actor. Alex is played as a bit of a Victorian slacker and Lindenbrock is an archetypical absent-minded professor. Both men do change dramatically through their adventures though — Alex finding a genuine intellectual curiosity while Professor Lindenbrock gains a new appreciation of just what it takes to get into the history books

Publisher's Summary
Journey to the Center of the Earth is one of literature’s earliest works of science fiction. It vividly animates a fantastical subterranean world as an intrepid crew, led by the eccentric Otto Lidenbrock, traverses the planet’s core and its various bizarre obstacles: giant mushrooms and insects, a herd of mastodons, prehistoric humans, a treacherous pit of magma, and more.

Tim Curry, narrator of the customer favorite A Christmas Carol, returns for an encore performance that delivers a range of distinct character voices and captures the energy and enthusiasm of a time when scientific exploration was a brand new adventure.


Listener's Reviews:
Listening to Tim Curry read Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth was a surprisingly entertaining experience. I had expected the novel to be a weak story overwhelmed by a series of dry scientific facts and pseudo-facts, but it was lively and funny and often exciting and awe-inducing.

The first-person narrator Axel is refreshingly reluctant, cowardly, weak, and despairing, especially when compared to his fiery, impetuous, glory-seeking, knowledge-hunting, unquenchable middle-aged uncle Professor Otto Lidenbrock and their taciturn do-everything guide Hans. Verne vividly depicts their descent down the volcano tube and exploration of the subterranean world deep inside the earth. Sure, the “science” is crazy, and it takes three and a half hours for them to even get down there, but Verne's enthusiasm for it all and the sense of the vast scale of time that has passed on our earth and the joy of discovery and the interplay between Axel and his uncle all glow brightly throughout.

Tim Curry multiplies the enjoyment. I'm still hearing in my mind his Professor Lidenbrock remonstrating with Axel to buck up or his Axel futilely trying to get "Uncle" not to do something reckless and chuckling to myself. 


Enjoy and Seed!!