Both options would be great listens, but different. Jewel starts with a traditional narrative but the narrative is moved forward with a series of linked reports, interviews and letters, so the narration style "suits." Narrated in a more interpretive style, I think it would be a different novel. At first I reacted as another reviewer: Is the quartet -a dry listen -worth 8 credits (9 counting Scott's "Staying On"), but by the end of pt 1 of Jewel, I decided it would be. It's delivered in what I think of as the older "books on tape" style of reading rather than the more currently popular interpretive narration style. What you get: Great characters and setting, revealing history woven into an engrossing narrative. Not the BBC adaptation, as good as that was I really enjoyed this listening experience, and I am committed to listening to all the volumes in the Raj Quartet. The accents didn't bleed into each other (as they are doing now, in Volume II, with a different narrator). He was adept at not spilling over the accents into the narrative or, when two characters, a Brit and and Indian, were talking to each other, he always delineated them. His voice is that of a highly educated Brit, but he nailed the characters from India. Richard Brown delivers an outstanding performance. Sometimes he breaks a moment down into tiny increments, which allowed me to draw a distinct picture in my mind of what was transpiring. Scott writes beautifully, and he includes unusual, telling details. Listening to this book should have irritated the heck out of me, but it didn't. Paul Scott's novel tells the story a majority of the time, the point of view is not consistent, and the narrator is often the voice. I instruct them that all narrative must come from within the story rather than outside it, from the storyteller.
I tell them to inhabit a point-of-view character rather than be an omniscient observer, a literary technique that is out of vogue.
I am a book editor, and I'm forever reminding my clients to show and not tell their story.
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