Story of cruel innocence

It's a story of spiralling down into savagery and brutality, a story of making a choice between good and evil, peace and war, God and Satan. The name Lord of the flies is actually translated as Beelzebul, one of the three main fallen angels along with Lucifer and Astaroth.
It is revolting to see how quickly and without compunction children can lose their innocence and become unruly bloodthirsty criminals.
As for the narrator, I was overwhelmed listening to M. Jarvis' performance. His rendition was exceptional.

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Classic - if a bit disturbing.

Another classic that I have been seeking on audio to add to my library for a while. This one because I had read it as a boy and enjoyed it greatly and wanted to add it to my rotating library of repeat listens. It makes it to that list very very easily.

The basic story is probably fairly well known. Group of boys. Desert Island. Add some time and wait for chaos to reign. I remembered that much from my boyhood read but there are layers here that I didn't get as a spotty teen.

And I'm coming to the conclusion that this is what makes a great book great.

Every time you read it it makes you think about some element of it differently and see some feature in a new light. Ostensibly this is a book about how small boys will happily become savages if left without authority. It is also wider, deeper and longer than that if you pause the recoding every now and then and let your mind wander over a scene for a few minutes and think about whatever else it throws into your head. Bit like tasting a good wine where you can (I'm told - cheap plonk man myself) start to seperate out individual notes from the flavour. "I'm getting - the beginnings of religion - the draw of superstition - mans inhumanity to man.........."

That said , if all you want is a good book with a good story well told and well read then this will do that for you too. Just that there is more there if you want it.

Martin Jarvis does an excellent job on the narration.

3 people found this helpful

Golding says ululating a lot.

That's it, great book, killer ending, poor Piggy, oops spoilers, you knew, fifteen words byeeeeeeeeee!

Carried away in thoughts

I sometimes got carried away in thoughts. Not a good sign that it was a book for me.

The book was one of the best I've read, but

Overall this was a great book, but the emense amount of discription of the environment made it a lot more boring to read and listen to. Other than that the book was amazing, the story, characters and this weird concept made you really think about how cruel the world is. Hey, and I liked the narrator to!

Too many metaphors

It was a walk down memory lane, have not read this since a child. Unfortunately, I had never realised how repetitious and heavy-handed the Author was until now. Still a great look at Human behaviour and entertaining #Team Ralph

lord of the flies

Loved it! Narrator was excellent! Long time overdue book for me to 'read'. Well done

Important Ideas but a boring story

I appreciated the writing, themes, and ideas. However, the plot is slow and cumbersomeand I struggled to finish the book.

Really great!

I liked the story quite a lot, apparently it's a classic. The narrative is good, a little silly sometimes, but it's all about kids anyways. A good one for a listen, and one for the old "I've read it" bank

What a messed up book

Imagine an island in the sea, where we boys can be, fish together and be happy and free. Until order collapses and we start raping piglets and killing each other. Jesus Christ, what a messed up book. I mean... God, why? It starts so nice and optimistic, and then suddenly the darkness grows, and we become savages. I liked this book very much, although it is a very dark and disturbing story.
The characters are believable, but I don't think I like any of them. Ralph was kind of a dork sometimes, Piggy was partly annoying and Jack was just straight up evil. Except my man Simon, he was very awesome and asked important questions. I think I would've liked it much better if I had read it when I was a little younger and less experienced, because sometimes the boys truly annoy me with their irrationality. Jesus Christ, who gives a shit about a fucking conch? That's some fascist shit right there.
Golding sometimes writes very long descriptions of actions, which makes it kinda slow, and I have to pay attention to everything that is happening. His message is that we all have the Lord of the Flies within us, which I can understand, but don't know if I agree with. Yes, most of the kids turn to shit, but Ralph, Piggy and Samneric still fight against what they are becoming. I think, if we are kind to each other, help each other and don't rape piglets or kill small boys, we all have a Lord of the Butterflies within us.
The audio is very good, but his voice for Piggy are very annoying.