Published: 1884
Genre: adventure fiction
Length: 366 pages, 11 hours audio
Setting: Mississippi River, 1800s
Interest: I picked up the audio book for our trip to South Carolina, and have finally finished listening to the book. I wanted to listen to a classic, and this one certainly counts.
Summary: Huck Finn’s father is trying to get Huck’s money, so Huck stages his death and heads off down the Mississippi River. He meets up with Jim, and escaped slave from his home town, and they continue down the river together. The Duke and the King, two con artists, talk their way onto the raft and “work” their way down the river. Huck isn’t too keen on their methods, but doesn’t see how to part ways, until they sell Jim back into slavery. Huck’s last adventure is impersonating Tom Sawyer, with Tom pretending to be his brother Sid, at Tom’s Aunt Sally’s. The boys spend their time scheming to free Jim again, in the most literary way possible (even though Tom knows Jim has already been freed when his owner died.)
Final thoughts: A slow start, but the last bit at the Aunt’s house was quite amusing, and made me laugh out loud several times. The reading was excellent, with the reader able to differentiate all the different voices and dialects (we had the Brilliance Audio edition performed by Dick Hill). The difference between Huck and Jim was the best, and you could even picture the difference in size based solely on the voice. My husband had a hard time listening to the story because of some of the language, which did require a conversation with the kids so they knew what words were inappropriate in this day and age. Overall, it is a fun story that is worth a read or listen to. If you want it for free (since it was written well before copyright), you can get both the audio version and a print version from Gutenberg.org.
Title comes from: Descriptive of the story.
