Narrating The Well of Loneliness

The Virago edition of The Well

As part of my training to be an audiobook narrator, I took the opportunity offered by the volunteer organised site www.librivox.org to record my first whole novel.

LibriVox helps new audiobook narrators with technical advice while offering the audio version of books in the public domain.

But how was I going to choose what to record?

Being lesbian myself, I ran through some books that might be in the public domain by or about lesbians. The Well of Loneliness came to mind.

It’s one of the most famous Lesbian books, as much for the obscenity trial that followed its publication in 1928 as for it’s content. It had only entered the public domain three years ago and no one had yet recorded the book for LibriVox.

Could I do justice to such a book? Also it is long. It ended up being over 18 hours of recording. When you understand that each recorded hour actually means about 3-4 hours of work. ( See my next blog post to find out what it involves…)

I had never read the book. In fact I had deliberately not read the book when I came across it in my 20s. I knew that it had a very depressing ending and I wasn’t in the mood to be depressed about the possibilities of my own life.

What I did not know was beautifully written it was. So poetic and very moving. The characters well drawn and many of the themes of lesbian existence still ringing true today. I don’t agree with her allegiance to the theory of the ‘invert’ that was popular at that time. Other than that and all the angst I was pleasantly surprised at the book and it has come to have a very dear place in my heart.

Now the book has many characters, with a variety of accents. The one I was keen to try to master was for the character of Angela Crossby. She is described by Radcliffe as having the lazy drawl of the southern United States. So I talked to my friend in North Carolina, got her to record some of the dialogue for me to practice with and listened to the film Fried Green Tomatoes on repeat plus of course using a YouTube 'How to speak Southern video'!

Some parts were really quite hard to read as having echoes in my own life. Stephen’s father is fatally injured and she and her mother are with him as he dies. Having to voice Stephen’s mother’s cruel rejection of her daughter was also a tough recording session.

LibriVox is very particular that we read only the original version. Subsequent publications are often edited slightly differently so although I did read this 1982 Virago edition, I actually recorded the version on Project Gutenberg’s website.

LibriVox also have a YouTube channel which has my recording on it.

I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did recording this really quite incredible book that has a special place in the hearts of many.

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