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The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (Unabridged)
 
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The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

by Evelyn Waugh (Author), Michael Cochrane (Narrator)
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Audio Download
  • Listening Length: 4 hours and 57 minutes
  • Program Type: Audiobook
  • Version: Unabridged
  • Publisher: CSA Word
  • Audible Release Date: 6 May 2008
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B002SQ457S
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product Description

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a semi-autobiographical story, which tells of the mental breakdown of an aging writer. Gilbert Pinfold takes a cruise to try to rebuild his shattered life, but what should his life be, and is he important to the world, anyway?

A poignant and sad book which is in turn often darkly humorous and uplifting, too, this is an insight into both the recesses of Waugh's own mind and his brilliant imagination, from which he creates a character who is both likeable and often openly derisable.

©2004 CSA Word; (P)2004 CSA Word
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First Sentence
It may happen in the next hundred years that the English novelists of the present day will come to be valued as we now value the artists and craftsmen of the late eighteenth century. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
The Ordeal of Waugh 10 Sep 2011
By Graham Chapman TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
The beautiful grandeur of Brideshead was in the past, but if you are happy to read a somewhat disturbing and personal account of a man aging and suffering acute personal anguish this is an excellent novel. It has a certain intensity, like Thomas Bernhard, which for some readers is good. Others not. I dip into this book more than I do Waugh's earlier novels and I would recommend it.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Waugh on Drugs 22 April 2012
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is an English version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Taking a holiday cruise, Pinfold consumes an unwise combination of alcohol and drugs and enters a private world of paranoid hallucination. The book is based (according to Wikipedia) on a voyage to Ceylon made by the author in 1954. He called it 'my barmy book'.

Waugh is a five star stylist, and there are some laughs, but ultimately I found Pinfold's chemical dystopia rather claustrophobic. There is also perhaps something lacking in terms of narrative tension: the hero goes on a cruise, hallucinates, and returns home. At the end, there is an 'oh darling, it's all been a terrible dream' sequence with his wife. As a story, it doesn't fly in the way that, for example, Brideshead does.

No complaints about Michael Cochrane's reading in this audio version, which is done with a good deal of elan.
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6 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Tedious 13 Sep 2008
By D. Kahn
Format:Paperback
I've been reading for 50 years what a great novel this is, so I thought I'd better get to it. It relates an (autobiographical, they say) description of a man suffering from extreme paranoia as the result of overindulgence in pharmaceutical remedies and alcohol. Think "delirium tremens". He is stuck on a sea voyage, and a group of imagined devils is persecuting him.

But the details of his illness go on for what seem endless pages, episode after episode, at least 30% more than necessary - and this is a short novel. I kept reading out of curiosity about what would happen in the end. Nothing. He goes back home.

His publisher should have trimmed it, presented it as a long short story in the form of a novelette. But Waugh, an excellent writer when in good form, was a nasty piece of work, and not to be toyed with.
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