Dutch Girl
Audrey Hepburn and World War II
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Narrated by:
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Tavia Gilbert
Twenty-five years after her passing, Audrey Hepburn remains the most beloved of all Hollywood stars, known as much for her role as UNICEF ambassador as for films like Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Several biographies have chronicled her stardom, but none has covered her intense experiences through five years of Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. According to her son, Luca Dotti, "The war made my mother who she was."
Audrey Hepburn's war included participation in the Dutch Resistance, working as a doctor's assistant during the "Bridge Too Far" battle of Arnhem, the brutal execution of her uncle, and the ordeal of the Hunger Winter of 1944. She also had to contend with the fact that her father was a Nazi agent and her mother was pro-Nazi for the first two years of the occupation. But the war years also brought triumphs as Audrey became Arnhem's most famous young ballerina.
Audrey's own reminiscences, new interviews with people who knew her in the war, wartime diaries, and research in classified Dutch archives shed light on the riveting, untold story of Audrey Hepburn under fire in World War II.
Also included is a section of color and black-and-white photos. Many of these images are from Audrey's personal collection and are published here for the first time.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Robert Matzen (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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But I just could not stand the narrator's affected inflection and overwrought stresses of words and syllables. In fact, she had an uncanny ability to add syllables to words - stressing the final consonant so hard that it actually created another syllable from the single letter. Like adding a short "a" after the letter "n."
She might be good narrating a young children's story, adding too much intrigue and excitement to every sentence to keep the child's attention. But for an adult, this narration was nothing less than deady annoying. To the extent that it distracted me from the story.
The story is filled with detail. While there are a lot of interesting insights into life under Nazi occupation during the war, and especially during the Dutch Hunger Winter 1944-45, there is also a lot of detail about Hepburn's early dance career. You'll hear in painful, repetitive detail about her teachers, her lessons, and practically every dance practice and recital in her young life. Where it took place, and practically what she danced.
There is a strange dichotomy in the book - apparently gleaned from Hepburn interviews, some diary entries, interviews with people who knew her, her children, and the combing of records dating back to before the war - between ther terrors of war, and her escape into dance. Some of it is interesting, some of it is just tedious detail.
The book paints a very positive image of Hepburn, attributing much of her personality to her experiences during the war. But after a while, it becomes somewhat repetitive. Even repeating the same experiences, such as what seemed like a single experience of seeing Jews being put on trains for deportation - repeated several times in nearly exactly the same terms.
Overall, I think there is a lot of good and interesting information in the book, but maybe it's better read from a printed page than read by this narrator. If I had it all to do over again, I would have returned this audiobook, and perhaps sought out the printed edition.
I couldn't wait for this to end!
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Very very long German names
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Horror of war in the Netherlands during WWII
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More history than Audrey - but still enlightening
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Audrey
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