The Incredulity of Father Brown

By: G. K. Chesterton

Narrated by: Stephen Scalon

In "The Incredulity of Father Brown," G.K. Chesterton treats us to another set of bizarre crimes that only his "stumpy" Roman Catholic prelate has the wisdom and mindset to solve. As usual, Chesterton loves playing with early twentieth-century class distinctions, "common-sense" assumptions, and the often anti-Catholic biases of his characters. He loves showing, through his characters, how those who hold themselves superior to the "fantasies" of Brown's Catholic faith themselves devolve into superstitious blithering when faced with the tiniest of mysteries.

In this collection, Brown finds himself as the main event at his own funeral (The resurrection of Father Brown), contemplating the possibility of death from the sky (The arrow of heaven), piercing the mystery of a dog's "prophetic" behavior (The oracle of the dog), and facing off against a curse hanging about a medieval burial (The curse of the golden cross). A collection of excellent tales from one of the finest British mystery writers.

©2019 G. K. Chesterton (P)2019 Page2Page

The Essentiality of Father Brown

Yes, there are flaws here. Our author’s trademark penchant for playfulness and paradox sometimes overwhelms the other facets of storytelling, right down to his characters all speaking in the same double-edged lexicon. Three times our reader, Stephen Scalon, makes a mistake, stops, and picks up the sentence again from the beginning—defects the sound engineer failed to edit out. And Scalon’s lack of easy versatility, combined with a somewhat wooden delivery, put me off more than a bit.

But I got over it. Or I got used to it. Then I got to liking it. And now, frankly, I enjoyed these stories immensely.

First, because they set me back a total of sixty-six cents. Second, this is the only audio edition of this Father Brown collection (and this is the only collection with which I’m not familiar). And, finally, there is no better tonic than Chesterton for those of us wearied by the official, tendentiously secular, ultra-materialist, faux-spiritual world we inhabit:

“Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude.”

'It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can't see things as they are.’

'You mustn't let that sort of stuff stupefy you…These devils always try to make us helpless by making us hopeless.'

'It isn't defending a man to say he is a genius.'

These are "Outtakes"

If you love Father Brown and Chesterton, this is a must, because it contains uncollected stories that will be new to you.

There is a reason that they have been uncollected, however. They are not his best . . . tending to be wordy and overly ideological (I like the theological aspect of many Father Brown stories, but here, Chesterton's dated Christian _ideology_ seems to take center stage more often).
Also be warned that you will find extreme ethnocentrism with abundant stereotypes and occasional mild (for his day-worse for ours) sexism and racism.

The reader is good on pacing and respecting sentence structure, and pleasant to listen to, so long as (if you're American) you can enjoy the American accents as comic relief. . . . they are indeed laughable.

A bit complex

Love Father Brown, but some of the explanations were a bit too complex. Sort of hard to follow.

Hardest Father Brown collection to find!

I was ecstatic when I saw this audiobook became available on Audible! I constantly searched Audible hoping that this one would appear because I had never read it before, and I'm so glad that it did. I adore GK Chesterton and his fiction, and I had been looking all over for this collection (I've read The Innocence/The Wisdom/The Scandal/The Secret of Father Brown) and I had a very hard time finding The Incredulity of Father Brown (not just as an audiobook, either, but I had only found it published with the other collections, not on its own). Some of the stories included were published, others were not. It's not my top favorite of his Father Brown series, but there are still some stories I love in this collection and it was such an enjoyable listen. I enjoyed the performance as well - very distinct characters. Thank you for adding this!!!

Father Brown would be incredulous.

My wife struggled from start to finish but she did finish, thanks mostly to the narrator's performance.