This piece has many strengths: A touching story, the author's nostalgic almost haunting voice, effective use of sound effects and music (the narrator singing?), details that take the listener to the places the narrator describes (the stones rolling in the waves, the narrow double bed, the fibers of the wool in the husband's pullover...). However, it is trying to do two things at once. The period feel and wistful story of the honeymoon doesn't quite mesh with the horrors of the battle at Dieppe thirteen years earlier. Perhaps this could have worked if the narrator had a closer connection to the earlier events or there was some other linking of the two periods. It's a shame it didn't work because in many ways it is a beautiful piece.
Review of Honeymoon in Dieppe
Elizabeth Yeoman
Posted on November 14, 2009 at 05:20 PM
This piece has many strengths: A touching story, the author's nostalgic almost haunting voice, effective use of sound effects and music (the narrator singing?), details that take the listener to the places the narrator describes (the stones rolling in the waves, the narrow double bed, the fibers of the wool in the husband's pullover...). However, it is trying to do two things at once. The period feel and wistful story of the honeymoon doesn't quite mesh with the horrors of the battle at Dieppe thirteen years earlier. Perhaps this could have worked if the narrator had a closer connection to the earlier events or there was some other linking of the two periods. It's a shame it didn't work because in many ways it is a beautiful piece.