Untold Stories by Alan Bennett
Dec. 7th, 2012 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Untold Stories is Alan Bennett’s first collection of prose since Writing Home and takes in all his major writings over the last ten years. The title piece is a poignant family memoir with an account of the marriage of his parents, the lives and deaths of his aunts and the uncovering of a long-held family secret. Also included are his much celebrated diaries for the years 1996 to 2004, as well as essays, reviews, lectures and reminiscences ranging from childhood trips to the local cinema and a tour around Leeds City Art Gallery to reflections on writing, honours and his Westminster Abbey eulogy for Thora Hird. At times heartrending and at others extremely funny, Untold Stories is a matchless and unforgettable anthology.
In an anthology that’s part diary, part straight autobiography, part extracts from his work and part essays, Alan Bennett shows his talent for both comedy and tragedy to great effect. However because there are so many different components to the book, it didn’t really hold together in the sense that there’s no real sense of a common thread running through it. As such, it’s a great book to dip in and out of (and I think it’s a must for Bennett completists) but it is exhausting to sit down and read through it from beginning to end in one sitting.
My favourite section is his autobiographical account of life in Leeds and his family life. His wry humour makes for a lot of entertainment but there’s also a lot here that’s tremendously moving. He talks about the history of psychological illness in his family – a grandfather whose suicide was a well kept family secret and his mother’s own battle with depression. He’s amazingly honest when describing his reactions to his mother’s illness, her time in asylums and the effect on his father.
His diaries are a delight – a mix of everyday banality, his working habits and memories of past work. He worries about whether to receive an honorary degree from Oxford, takes trips to old churches, is curmudgeonly about Classic FM, all intertwined with reminiscences from earlier in his life and some hilarious showbiz stories that made me snort with laughter.
The least successful section for me were his art history lectures, partly because it’s a subject I’m unfamiliar with so some of his points and observations went over my head; partly because the publisher was unable to secure rights to reproduce some of the works that he talks about, which meant that I was unable to visualise some of his points.
Much is made about how Bennett talks about his homosexuality in this book, his relationship with his partner and his battle with cancer. Although it is interesting to read his recollections of his awareness of his homosexuality, the rest of it is so low key as to be uninteresting.
All in all, it’s an interesting and entertaining read for anyone who’s ever enjoyed Alan Bennett’s work and want to know more about him as a person, but you’d do better to dip in and out of the different sections than reading it all at once.
The Verdict:
In an anthology that’s part diary, part straight autobiography, part extracts from his work and part essays, Alan Bennett shows his talent for both comedy and tragedy to great effect. However because there are so many different components to the book, it didn’t really hold together in the sense that there’s no real sense of a common thread running through it. As such, it’s a great book to dip in and out of (and I think it’s a must for Bennett completists) but it is exhausting to sit down and read through it from beginning to end in one sitting.
Untold Stories is Alan Bennett’s first collection of prose since Writing Home and takes in all his major writings over the last ten years. The title piece is a poignant family memoir with an account of the marriage of his parents, the lives and deaths of his aunts and the uncovering of a long-held family secret. Also included are his much celebrated diaries for the years 1996 to 2004, as well as essays, reviews, lectures and reminiscences ranging from childhood trips to the local cinema and a tour around Leeds City Art Gallery to reflections on writing, honours and his Westminster Abbey eulogy for Thora Hird. At times heartrending and at others extremely funny, Untold Stories is a matchless and unforgettable anthology.
In an anthology that’s part diary, part straight autobiography, part extracts from his work and part essays, Alan Bennett shows his talent for both comedy and tragedy to great effect. However because there are so many different components to the book, it didn’t really hold together in the sense that there’s no real sense of a common thread running through it. As such, it’s a great book to dip in and out of (and I think it’s a must for Bennett completists) but it is exhausting to sit down and read through it from beginning to end in one sitting.
My favourite section is his autobiographical account of life in Leeds and his family life. His wry humour makes for a lot of entertainment but there’s also a lot here that’s tremendously moving. He talks about the history of psychological illness in his family – a grandfather whose suicide was a well kept family secret and his mother’s own battle with depression. He’s amazingly honest when describing his reactions to his mother’s illness, her time in asylums and the effect on his father.
His diaries are a delight – a mix of everyday banality, his working habits and memories of past work. He worries about whether to receive an honorary degree from Oxford, takes trips to old churches, is curmudgeonly about Classic FM, all intertwined with reminiscences from earlier in his life and some hilarious showbiz stories that made me snort with laughter.
The least successful section for me were his art history lectures, partly because it’s a subject I’m unfamiliar with so some of his points and observations went over my head; partly because the publisher was unable to secure rights to reproduce some of the works that he talks about, which meant that I was unable to visualise some of his points.
Much is made about how Bennett talks about his homosexuality in this book, his relationship with his partner and his battle with cancer. Although it is interesting to read his recollections of his awareness of his homosexuality, the rest of it is so low key as to be uninteresting.
All in all, it’s an interesting and entertaining read for anyone who’s ever enjoyed Alan Bennett’s work and want to know more about him as a person, but you’d do better to dip in and out of the different sections than reading it all at once.
The Verdict:
In an anthology that’s part diary, part straight autobiography, part extracts from his work and part essays, Alan Bennett shows his talent for both comedy and tragedy to great effect. However because there are so many different components to the book, it didn’t really hold together in the sense that there’s no real sense of a common thread running through it. As such, it’s a great book to dip in and out of (and I think it’s a must for Bennett completists) but it is exhausting to sit down and read through it from beginning to end in one sitting.
