Much to my surprise, Sandy Bauers of Knight Ridder Newspapers wrote about my review of The Return Of The Native audio tapes. Ms Bauers shows great rickmaniac proclivities, as you might see, even when she considers my review "gushing" (if she wants gushing, she should read my review of Sense & Sensibility -- in English, and in Spanish!).
I sent Ms Bauers a thank you note, and told her my name really is Fausta. Then I sent my mom a copy of the article. The article ran in Canada and the USA.
My thanks to Gail, Leatha, and Rebecca for forwarding this article. Following is the complete text of the article:

Copyright 1999 McClatchy Newspapers, Inc.
Sacramento Bee
View Related Topics
February 14, 1999, METRO FINAL
SECTION: SCENE; Pg. F2
LENGTH: 486 words

BYLINE: Sandy Bauers, Knight Ridder Newspapers

A relatively small audio company has released a 16-hour recording of a vaguely moldy classic, and a group of star-struck women couldn't be happier.

Truth to tell, they care about as much for the book -- Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native -- as they would about a whisker on a hedgehog. It is the reader, Alan Rickman, that makes them swoon.

The company, Audio Partners, has contracted with a British group that specializes in unabridged audio versions of classics on the label Cover to Cover.

All the readings are by renowned actors, and the imprint rates the endorsement -- plus a logo called a "royal warrant" -- from His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. (Exactly what that means is unclear, but it is impressive all the same, no?)

The Cover to Cover recordings pick up prizes wherever they go. And now they have come to the U.S. In the last year, Audio Partners has released nearly a dozen titles, including Irene Sutcliffe reading Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," Ronald Pickup reading Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," Patricia Routledge reading Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights."

The latest is "The Return of the Native" (15.45 hours, $ 44.95), read by Rickman, a Shakespeare veteran familiar to moviegoers who have seen "Die Hard," "Truly Madly Deeply," "Michael Collins," and others.

The "Rickmaniacs," as they call themselves on the "Rickmanista Review" Web page, rate the production overall as merely a two-hander. (They say the sexiest thing about Rickman's body is his hands, so they rate everything according to that.) But his reading itself gets five hands, the ultimate.

Neither score is hard to understand.

Hardy does tend to ooze along. Once he actually gets into the tale, it is a fine old-fashioned soap opera. But before that, he spends the entire first chapter setting the mood by describing the heath.

Oof.

Rickman's voice, however, is a warm blanket on a cold day. If velvet could speak, it would sound like Rickman. He is great at the accents of the country folk, and he differentiates well between men and women, children and oldsters.

If he were a singer, he would be a Perry Como or some other crooner. (Actually he does sing on this tape -- in French, no less, "ooh-la-la!" -- but a bona fide singer he is not.)

For the final word, however, one should probably seek out a Rickman expert, someone like "Fausta," as she identifies herself on the Rickmanista Web site.

In a gushing review, she confessed to "having put down more Hardy books after the first 50 pages than anyone can count," and, even considering Rickman was the reader, she held off listening to "The Return of the Native" for months. Finally, she took the plunge, much to her delight.

"Mr. Rickman speaks, and all is perfect," she nearly swooned. His reading "is just the thing to nearly make me change my mind about Hardy."

It's hard to find higher praise than that.