Odette: A Fairy Tale for Weary People
A Decadent Spiritual Fable of Catholic Mysticism, Holiness, Beauty, and FatigueBy Ronald Firbank
Length36m
About this audiobook
Ronald Firbank's *Odette: A Fairy Tale for Weary People* transforms the conventions of the wonder tale into a miniature theatre of wit, disenchantment, and spiritual ambiguity. Its apparently simple fairy-tale framework—princesses, courts, desire, and the promise of enchantment—becomes a vehicle for Firbank's characteristic examination of exhausted idealism and the fragile consolations of art. The prose is exquisitely compressed, aphoristic, and elliptical, animated by sudden shifts in tone, brilliant dialogue, and an almost musical attention to cadence. Beneath its decorative surfaces, the work belongs to the early twentieth-century movement away from Victorian narrative fullness toward modernist fragmentation, theatricality, and ironic self-consciousness. Firbank (1886–1926) was an English novelist celebrated for his flamboyant Catholic imagination, aesthetic sensibility, and radically idiosyncratic style. A cosmopolitan observer of social ritual, he drew upon opera, liturgy, travel, and the artificial worlds of aristocratic and theatrical culture. His conversion to Roman Catholicism and his lifelong preoccupation with mortality, beauty, and transcendence inform the book's tension between fairy-tale consolation and worldly fatigue. Published posthumously in 1927, *Odette* reflects the refined, abbreviated manner that distinguished his later work. This is an ideal book for readers drawn to literary fairy tales, decadent and modernist prose, or fiction in which elegance conceals philosophical seriousness. It rewards slow reading, inviting attention to every tonal nuance and startling verbal turn.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 3.5 (43)
Includes Goodreads, LibraryThing
GenreGeneral Fiction, Fairy Tales and Folklore
Length36 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateNov 23, 2023
LanguageEnglish
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