Behind A Mask by Louisa May Alcott

I always thought audio books were not for me but I did see a lot of friends really appreciate and enjoy audiobooks that I thought of giving it a try. I love classics and found the audiobook- Behind A Mask on the Podcast app.

The Book:

I had previously read Little Women and its sequels by Louisa May Alcott and loved them. I had never heard of this book before but thought it was something similar to Little Women. However, it is quite different. The book is inspired from some personal experience of the writer.

The story begins with the arrival of Jean Muir, a poor governess to a teenage girl in the Coventry household.  At the very beginning of the story itself, the writer indicates that Jean has an ulterior motive for taking up the job with the Coventrys. She soon wins hearts of everyone in the household except for Gerald, who has his suspicions about her; Lucia who is jealous of her many skills and also worried that she might be trying to charm her fiancé  Gerald and Dean, Lucia's maid. Over a period of  time she also wins over Gerald but he was not the prize she was eyeing. You need to read/listen to the book to know more. There are several other important characters in the book who contribute actively to the development of the story- Edward (Gerald's brother), John (Uncle of Gerald), Mrs. Coventry (Gerald's mother), Bella- the teenage sister of Gerald, whose care and education was Jean Muir's primary responsibility as a governess.

The story seems to have a setting in the Victorian era where a lot of emphasis on the appropriateness of behaviour of men and women was given. The descriptions of the lifestyle followed by the Coventrys also gives an indication that the story was probably set in the Victorian age.

I enjoyed the story a lot but had I been the writer, I would demonstrate Jean Muir's intentions and reality only in the end. The revelation comes too early in the story. However, the ending is not as I expected where good prevails over evil. If I were to rate the book on a scale of 1-5, I would rate it 4/5 for the aforementioned reason.

The Audiobook Experience

I did not know what to expect. I downloaded the Audible app by Amazon and here, the reading of some of the books I chose to sample were done either by the writers themselves or some celebrities. However, in the podcast app, it was neither the writer nor a celebrity. The experience may not be the same for Audible and Podcast. I have summarised my experience below solely based on the Podcast app:

-  The reading was quite fluent and since it was a podcast, split into several weekly episodes. Luckily for me, the reading of the entire book was already done, so, I was able to listen to all the episodes one after another.
- A brief introduction to the writer and a bit of background to the story was provided before the actual reading, which was quite interesting for someone like me who usually dives in straight to the story.
- Jean Muir seems to have come from France but the reader seemed to forget it. Some of her dialogues are in French accent, while others are not.
- While reading, I find myself more focussed and rapt but while listening, I found myself zoning in and out sometimes or distracted several times by something or the other, as, I listened to the whole book during my commute to work. I think I have to get used to listening to a reading.
- It felt nice to be read to after a long time and the reader did a fairly good job. Following this book, I tried having a reading of another book by another reader but it sounded so dull that I could not bear it for long and had to close it prematurely.
- While reading, we often know how certain words or certain not-so-common names are spelt but not necessarily the sound of it. While listening, you may hear the words/names and not really know how they are written- this is from another book I chose, not this one.
- It really helps one keep themselves constructively occupied during a long commute or even in sickness when you feel like reading but the activity may seem strenuous- this comes in handy.
- While reading a conventional book, I sometimes re-read some impressive pages or passages over and over again by simply bookmarking them. It is difficult to do this in the podcast app. I have not tried it in Audible.
- I liked the experience but cannot say I loved it. I probably need to read more (or must I say listen to more) to love the experience.

P.S: I hope you liked the original artwork on this post :-).