The Call of the Wild
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The Call of the Wild Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Jack London (Author), Phil Chenevert (Narrator), FILROUGEVICEVERSA (Publisher)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 11,269 ratings
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The Call of the Wild is a short adventure novel by Jack London, published in 1903 and set in Yukon, Canada, during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, when strong sled dogs were in high demand.

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  1. Listening Length
    3 hours and 50 minutes
  2. Author
    Jack London
  3. Narrator
    Phil Chenevert
  4. Audible release date
    September 8, 2020
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    FILROUGEVICEVERSA
  7. ASIN
    B08HND8B4P
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 3 hours and 50 minutes
Author Jack London
Narrator Phil Chenevert
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date September 08, 2020
Publisher FILROUGEVICEVERSA
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B08HND8B4P
Best Sellers Rank #37,868 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#24 in Classic Action & Adventure (Audible Books & Originals)
#214 in Classic Action & Adventure (Books)
#810 in Classic Literature

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
11,269 global ratings
The Call of the Wild
5 Stars
The Call of the Wild
This was cheap and came fast. A good book too. If you are looking for a paper copy of this book I recommend this one.
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Top reviews from the United States

LynnS77
5.0 out of 5 stars The Call
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2023
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I read this book as a child when it was suggested to me by not only my family, but by my school. I’m not certain how old I was, but I’m certain that I wasn’t out of grade school. Of course, this was a different time when we found different priorities and I suppose my reading level was more important than my not finding the book I was reading to be full of sadness. Doesn’t most children love dogs and find animal abuse horrifying? I know that I certainly did, but once you start a book like this there’s no quitting it. So anyone who has not read this book and thinks it’s a good adventure book to give to a small child, I suggest you read it first. I was a tough kid, it was okay, just not what I expected as a child hoping for adventure.

It is a good book though, good enough for me to want to put it in my reviews and even skim it again. The story is set during the Klondike gold rush when a big and beautiful pet is stolen from a ranch in California to be used as a sled dog.

Buck’s life changes overnight from being pampered to being beaten by humans and bullied by other dogs. The temperature drops practically overnight, and Buck must learn to adapt to living in freezing conditions and snow with no shelter and very little food. He learns the pecking order fast, and learns that he doesn’t want to be submissive.

When they reach their destination the dogs are starved and further abused, but Buck is fortunate and is saved by a kind man that he forms a new bond with. That was one of my favorite parts of the book.

This is still a classic and good for young adults, but not for children imo.
6 people found this helpful
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Forbidding
4.0 out of 5 stars Paper Mill Press Paperback
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2023
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This isn't the best print of this book, but it is very good for a budget release. The glossy text against the matte white background is very nice looking. It gets dirty easily though, and is a bit tricky to clean because of the paperboard cover (not suede-adjacent like advertised).
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Margaret McDowall-Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars Call of the Wild
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2024
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I like the fact that the feeling s of Buck are expressed as well as the opinions the men who handled him
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VeteranSuicideAwarenessJeep
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book, very readable front
Reviewed in the United States on February 29, 2024
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The “Call of the Wild” by Jack London is a great book on a dogs perspective of their life. It was a great read, it is only about 110 pages. I finished the book in one day, actually a few hours. I highly recommend you read this book.
One person found this helpful
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Betty Reeder
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2024
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One of those books that you can't put down, a true classic. This book provides several hours of reading with no dull pages in it.
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Philip Carl
5.0 out of 5 stars Jack London - Part Prolific Novelist, Part Wolf
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2007
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After reading "The Call of the Wild" or more precisely, after being transferred to another place and time, or even more to the point after being totally submerged into the being of this animal, I'm left completely awe-struck by London's work.

To see what Buck saw, to feel the forces and the instincts that he felt... that is the power of this book. Here's a passage from the third chaper to illustrate what I mean:

"At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after super, Dub (a member of the sled-dog team) turned up a snowshoe rabbit, blundered it, and missed. A hundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the chase. The rabbit sped down the river, turned off into a small creek, up the frozen bed of which it held steadily. It ran lightly on the surface of the snow, while the dogs plowed through by main strength. Buck led the pack, sixty strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down low to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.

All the stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill--all this was Buck's, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He as mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move."
7 people found this helpful
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Ty K.
3.0 out of 5 stars Book format is odd
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2024
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To make it cheaper they put a bunch of pages on one page, so get out yer magnifying glass
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Top reviews from other countries

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Lilimip
5.0 out of 5 stars Retorno à natureza primordial
Reviewed in Brazil on December 2, 2022
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Jack London cria uma impressionante história sobre a vida literalmente selvagem de homens e cães no cenário inóspito do Alasca, nos tempos da corrida pelo ouro. Sendo um aventureiro, provavelmente muitas de suas experiências pessoais dão suporte à narrativa. Seu estilo, simples e direto, facilita a entrada do leitor nesta incrível aventura e o prende até o final do livro.
A história é contada pela perspectiva de um cão doméstico, Buck, acostumado a uma vida tranquila em um sítio na Califórnia, até ser sequestrado e levado às terras do Norte. Lá, ele se torna parte de uma matilha de cães puxadores de trenó. A duras penas, Buck vai percebendo a natureza boa ou má dos companheiros caninos, a lei do chicote e a crueldade dos homens, despidos de qualquer compaixão. No rigor do ambiente gelado o que resta a Buck é a luta corajosa por manter-se vivo. Assim, vai deixando aflorar seu instinto primitivo e primordial, anteriormente mascarado por um verniz de civilidade.
O livro também pode ser lido como uma metáfora. Quando submetida a condições extremas, a fina divisória entre a civilização e a barbárie é rompida. Mas Buck ainda guarda uma ética rudimentar. Ele nunca perde a dignidade. Sua violência é pela sobrevivência, não é gratuita. No meio da traição, esperteza, ciúme, raiva e inveja, ainda há espaço para a amizade, gratidão, lealdade e amor.
One person found this helpful
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Devaki Padmanandan
5.0 out of 5 stars Good quality
Reviewed in India on March 16, 2024
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The product was delivered very quickly and the quality of the book is good. Satisfied with the purchase 👍👍
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Devaki Padmanandan
5.0 out of 5 stars Good quality
Reviewed in India on March 16, 2024
The product was delivered very quickly and the quality of the book is good. Satisfied with the purchase 👍👍
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selene
5.0 out of 5 stars storia di Buck
Reviewed in Italy on October 20, 2022
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Un bellissimo libro d'avventura che esprime tutto il talento dello scrittore statunitense e il suo amore per la natura, anche nei suoi aspetti più duri e selvaggi.
La storia del cane Buck inizia in California alla fine dell'Ottocento, figlio di un sanbernardo e di una femmina di pastore scozzese, vive nella villa del giudice Miller. Con l'inizio della "corsa dell'oro" nel Klondike, aumenta la richiesta di cani da slitta, unico mezzo possibile per percorrere quella freddissima parte settentrionale del continente americano e il povero Buck viene venduto dal losco giardiniere del suo padrone a un trafficante dai modi brutali... le dure condizioni dei cani da slitta sono descritte in modo molto realistico e commovente.
7 people found this helpful
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Ricardo
5.0 out of 5 stars Tal cual.
Reviewed in Spain on January 2, 2022
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Todo ok.
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Katja H. Labonté
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
Reviewed in Canada on September 21, 2020
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4 stars. The first time I read this book, I quite enjoyed it. It’s not for everyone. It's blunt and wild and violent and intense and alive. There were parts where even I cringed—particularly at the beginning. But somehow one grows hardened quickly, along with the dogs and the men… yet you never grow callous, only stronger.

The merit of this book is fascinating—real life in the Canadian Northwest in the 1890s, so often romanticized although anything but. It’s a story of sled dogs and mail couriers, with all their unvarnished coolness and strength. It is the tale of a dog stolen from a good home and becoming more and more brutalized until he joins his untamed brethren in the wilderness and forgoes civilization entirely.

The writing style of this book is really quite striking. Jack London brings to stark life the cold, cruel North. Although I live relatively to the South—relatively to Buck and his friends, that is—I have enough of a daily experience with the Canadian winter to recognize how accurately London writes. Besides good description, he has an excellent trick of saying much in few words, and giving much action without great detail. He makes a splendid study in brevity and clarity.

The characters of the book pass in and out like their shadows did through Buck’s life. François and Perrault won respect, if not affection, by their humanity and justness. They were a product of their surroundings—coarse, hard, simple men—but they were fair, and they treated their dogs with the humaneness they could afford. Charles, Mercedes, and Henry form a brief and tragic chapter; and then John brings a flow of real love that melts book’s iciness slightly.

The book is rather short—about a hundred pages, a novella’s size—but the story feels much longer, so much is compacted within those few 32,000 words. There is the warm beginning, a startling inciting event, then all of Buck’s education under Perrault as he runs the mail course up North; the return down South, worn to threadpaper; the terrible, crazy journey to the goldmines; the call of the wild… and the bittersweet ending. All along, London balances humour and grit, beauty and pain.

The theme of the book seems to be the puniness of mankind pitted against the grandeur of God’s creation, and it is strongly borne out to the reader. Man’s inability to control his own or his possessions’ life is deeply underlined. It is not, contrary to what London insists, blind chance or an impersonal train of events. But he shows the fragility of civilization against wilderness, of humanity against nature, in a way that drives home the folly of our own pride and self-sufficiency. The laws of creation are there, and man will never, can never, override them—they are set unchangingly by the Creator. This is one of the books that, depending on your worldview, changes dramatically. London’s own is evolutionary; and with that mindset, life is indeed drear and terrifying. With a God-centered perceptive, though, one finds comfort and security. A smaller message is the difference between caving to surroundings and becoming as harsh as they, as opposed to retaining one’s moral and civil code.

Content: violence; mild language.

A Favourite Quote: There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.... He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.
3 people found this helpful
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