Smut: Two Unseemly Stories - Hardcover

Alan Bennett

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846685257 ISBN 13: 9781846685255

Publisher: Profile Books(GB), 2011

Synopsis

This title includes unexpected tales from the master of short fiction. "The Shielding of Mrs Forbes" - Graham Forbes is a disappointment to his mother who thinks that if he must have a wife, he should have done better. And her own husband would be better if she were mourning him than living with him. But this is Alan Bennett, so no matter the importance of keeping up appearances, what is happening in the bedroom (and in lots of other places too) is altogether more startling, perhaps shocking, and ultimately much more honest to people's predilections. "The Greening of Mrs Donaldson" - Mrs Donaldson is a conventional middle-class woman beached on the shores of widowhood after a marriage that had been much like many others: happy to begin with, then satisfactory and finally dull. But when she decides to take in two lodgers (a young, broke couple) passions that she never knew existed are aroused, and her mundane life becomes much more stimulating...

About this title

About the Author:

Alan Bennett has been one of our leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for stage including Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of George III (together with the Oscar-nominated screenplay The Madness of King George), and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. At the National Theatre, London, The History Boys won numerous awards. On Broadway, The History Boys won five New York Drama Desk Awards, four Outer Critcs' Circle Awards, a New York Drama Critics' Award, a New York Drama League Award and six Tony's. The Habit of Art opened at the National in 2009. His collection of prose, Untold Stories, won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for autobiography, 2006.

Review:

Beautiful and filthy -- Simon Hattenstone * Guardian * Smut offers plenty of Bennett's trademark pleasures... consistently amusing and full of witty turns of phrase -- Sarah Churchwell * Guardian * Amusingly peculiar... tender and comic... joyous anarchism... It is good, old-fashioned British humour with the lightest of subversive twists. -- Arifa Akbar * Independent * Artfully entertaining... The stories have a dark, knowing shrewdness about erotic mischief, young and old... As always the writing is tonally perfect, laced with deadpan as well as bedpan comedy. -- Simon Schama * FT * All Bennett's work seems to me a dreamy evocation of an imaginary world in which he'd like to dwell, full of jokes and queerness. These days, he seems to be getting steadily smuttier, ever more disinhibited. But more strength to his elbow, I say. -- David Sexton * Evening Standard * Marinated in subtleties. He's never as simple as he likes to appear ... That peculiarly British maladroitness - the perennial blush, wince and averted eye - and how adroitly it is grappled with, can make for great storytelling -- John Sutherland * The Times * Hilarious * The Times * In these two stories he applies his elegant literary gifts to his territory with the unabashed glee of one watching Benny Hill getting it on with Anita Brookner ... Bennett's talent for the honed quip is securely in place -- Adam Lively * Sunday Times * Unmitigated delight -- Christina Hardyment * The Times * Alan Bennett continues to surprise and delight -- John Banville * Sunday Telegraph * You can always rely on Alan Bennett to capture the intricate nuances of English Life and his latest offering is no exception * Good Housekeeping * Smut, the perfect title for this elegant little volume, is exactly what the stories are about. On a wider scale, however, they expose the hidden foibles of human nature in a way that is witty and wise but always acutely observed * The Age, Australia * Both stories are nearly structured by a master storyteller * Canberra Times, Australia * Smut is vintage Bennett, especially the voice, so unremittingly lugubrious that, by comparison, his legendary Eeyore impersonation sounds blithe -- Sue Arnold * Guardian * Unmistakably Bennett ... very funny -- A N Wilson * Reader's Digest * Touching, human and very, very funny * Sunday Times * Small but perfectly formed ... will have you chortling dirtily * The Lady * Hugely entertaining ... an absolute joy * Radio Times * Exploding with peepholes and post-coital custard creams -- Camilla Long * Sunday Times * Joe Orton under the influence of Sheridan, with a faint hint of Hylda Baker * Daily Telegraph Radio Review * He writes about completely ordinary people, middle- and working-class, from drab places. He knows them. He grew up in Leeds; his father was a butcher. Again true to his native literature, he is almost always interested in morals, and in the difficulty of being good. Finally, like so many of his countrymen, he is a master satirist ... Bennett is casting a vote for women and, most touchingly, for people who are no longer young -- Joan Acocella * New Yorker * Bennett delivers ... with great finesse -- Joan Acocella * New Yorker *

About this edition

• Publisher: Profile Books(GB)
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1846685257
• ISBN 13: 9781846685255
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180