Review by New York Times Review
In Alan Bennett's novel, the queen discovers the joy of reading. BY JEREMY McCARTER ALAN BENNETT belongs to a generation of British playwrights for whom all the world's a faculty club, and they've got tenure. Like Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn, Bennett ambles through different styles and forms as he pleases, alternating the erudite fun of "The History Boys" - the classroom play (and later movie) in which the best jokes are in French - with diaries, short stories and the odd divertissement for The London Review of Books. What's most appealing in Bennett's writing, though, is often the least donnish. "The Uncommon Reader," his new novella, is a kind of palace fairy tale for grown-ups. Once again he tells a story about an eccentric old lady, a character type he seems to enjoy. (He wrote a wonderful memoir, "The Lady in the Van," about the nut job who lived in his garden for 15 years.) This time, his odd, isolated heroine is the queen of England. The story of her budding love affair with literature blends the comic and the poignant so smoothly it can only be by Bennett. It's not his very best work, but it distills his virtues well enough to suggest how such a distinctive style might have arisen. Does Bennett have an affinity with Kafka because he wrote a delightfully weird play about him or did he write the play because of the affinity? Either way, the story bears a trace of Kafka's ever-so-slightly quizzical habit of describing how bolts from the blue can intrude upon humdrum lives. On a walk one day, the royal dogs veer off their usual course, leading the queen (who's unnamed, but Elizabeth-like) toward the palace kitchen. There's a library van in the driveway that she's never seen before and wouldn't have visited if she had: "She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people." To avoid embarrassing the librarian, the queen fumblingly borrows a volume by Ivy Compton-Burnett. Enjoying the experience, she returns to choose, with greater confidence, Nancy Mitford's "Pursuit of Love." ("Novels seldom came as well connected as this and the queen felt correspondingly reassured.") As the book-struck queen begins to devour Henry James, the Brontes and modern writers she'd knighted without having read, the story reminds you that its author has sketch comedy in his bones. From "Beyond the Fringe," the Oxbridge satirical triumph of the early 1960s, Bennett absorbed this logic: a comic premise must be teased out, stroke by stroke, to reach its full hilarity. And so, page by page, the queen's reading wreaks ever greater havoc on the lives of equerries, family members and subjects. The prime minister is assigned (and grows exasperated by) his homework; the corgis destroy books on sight. Even the queen's small talk with her subjects, usually confined to unthinking chitchat about traffic, turns chaotic when she starts asking what they're reading: "To this very few of Her Majesty's loyal subjects had a ready answer (though one did try: 'The Bible?')." Around this point in the story, Evelyn Waugh or Kingsley Amis would be cackling about the satiric pain they're about to inflict, but Bennett pulls back, leaving comic avenues unexplored. (No literary critics are sent to the Tower.) As in so many of his stories - say, "Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet," in which an aging store clerk starts a peculiar but edifying affair with her foot-fetishizing podiatrist - Bennett seems less interested in wringing out every laugh than in showing us a cosseted soul stumbling toward liberation. In a characteristically bitter-sweet touch, he no sooner describes how reading has made the queen less maniacally fastidious about her schedule and wardrobe - that is, more of a human being like the rest of us - than her aides start condescending to her. "Probably Alzheimer's," says one. At moments like these, it's not Bennett's comic sense or flair for language that sets him apart from his contemporaries but his empathy for the marginal and misunderstood, a legacy, maybe, of having been a socially awkward lad from Yorkshire. Like most of Bennett's fiction, this is a slender work - an afternoon's read. Yet even at this length, it feels a trifle thin. Neither the humor nor the pathos seems packed as tightly here as in "The Clothes They Stood Up In," the tale of a dowdy middle-aged couple losing all their possessions that is, for me, his saddest, funniest story. Still, his account of the queen's adventures often made me laugh out loud, and, after Helen Mirren's performance in "The Queen," offered yet another reason to think warmly of Her Majesty, another reminder that marble has veins. Jeremy McCarter, the theater critic at New York magazine, is editing a collection of Henry Fairlie's writing.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Who would guess that reading books could prompt a constitutional crisis? In Britain this strange and unusual scenario does indeed play out, at least in this delightful political-social comedy by a celebrated British writer. One day the queen takes inadvertent advantage of a bookmobile that happens to arrive at a Buckingham Palace back door; she rather accidentally borrows a book. She'd never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people. As surprising to herself as to those who know her, the queen develops into a dedicated, avid reader of serious literature, and the court and her government are sent reeling by this new royal practice as well as by her newfound knowledge about all kinds of things. When she turns from the joy of reading to a desire to write, the consequences are jolting. In the wake of the popularity of the movie The Queen, this crafy work of satire should find an appreciative American audience.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Briskly original and subversively funny, this novella from popular British writer Bennett (Untold Stories; Tony-winning play The History Boys) sends Queen Elizabeth II into a mobile library van in pursuit of her runaway corgis and into the reflective, observant life of an avid reader. Guided by Norman, a former kitchen boy and enthusiast of gay authors, the queen gradually loses interest in her endless succession of official duties and learns the pleasure of such a "common" activity. With "the dawn of her sensibility... mistaken for the onset of senility," plots are hatched by the prime minister and the queen's staff to dispatch Norman and discourage the queen's preoccupation with books. Ultimately, it is her own growing self-awareness that leads her away from reading and toward writing, with astonishing results. Bennett has fun with the proper behavior and protocol at the palace, and the few instances of mild coarseness seem almost scandalous. There are lessons packed in here, but Bennett doesn't wallop readers with them. It's a fun little book. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
British screenwriter, playwright, and novelist Bennett, author of the Tony Award-winning play The History Boys, has written a wry and unusual story about the subversive potential of reading. Bennett posits a theoretical situation in which Queen Elizabeth II becomes an avid reader, and the new ideas she thus encounters change the way she thinks and reigns. Coming upon a traveling library near Buckingham Palace, Elizabeth, who almost never reads, decides to take a look. Mostly out of politeness, she begins to borrow from the library via a kitchen page. As she begins to view reading as her "duty," a way "to find out what people are like," she is exposed to increasingly sophisticated books and ideas that criticize society. As Elizabeth loses interest in the chain of ship launches and groundbreakings that make up her reign, her staff becomes resentful, and the story ends in an unexpected way. Though the book is at times annoyingly snobbish and harping that people do not read enough, the unusual story line keeps readers engrossed. Recommended for larger public libraries and libraries where British literature is popular.-Christina Bauer, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A royal fable celebrating the transformative properties (and a few of the unsettling consequences) of reading as an obsession. In a country of commoners, the uncommon reader is the Queen. She has never been a reader, because reading isn't something that "one" (as she invariably refers to herself) does. Yet an unlikely incident involving her dogs and a mobile library making its weekly appearance outside Buckingham Palace moves her to borrow a book. And then another. And another, until reading has become her life's focus. Though the prolific Bennett is better known in America for his plays and screenplays (his Tony Award-winning play, The History Boys, was made into a movie in 2007), his subtle wit and tonal command show why he is so beloved in his native Britain. Yet this slight novella feels padded, because once he puts his plot into motion--the Queen reads, reading changes the Queen, others are uncomfortable with the changes--he doesn't really have anywhere to take it except in circles, as it moves toward what might be a surprise ending. There are some funny bits: her questioning of the president of France about Jean Genet (of whom he hasn't a clue) and the disdain she develops for the "perpetually irritating Henry James." She also enjoys a lovely visit with one of her literary subjects, Alice Munro. Perhaps the keenest insight here concerns her difficulty with Jane Austen, whose novels pivot so frequently on class distinctions that the Queen herself has never experienced. Those who love reading will recognize the process of the Queen's enrapturing, how one book inevitably leads to another, and so many others, and that the richness of the reading life will always be offset by the recognition that time grows shorter as the list of books grows longer. Yet this is ultimately a breezy afternoon's read, one that doesn't seem like it took all that much more effort to write. If, as the Queen discovers, reading is "a muscle" that she has "seemingly developed," this novella reads like light calisthenics rather than heavy lifting. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
