THE CLOTHES THEY STOOD UP IN

Name: THE CLOTHES THEY STOOD UP IN
Author: Alan Bennett
ISBN: 0-375-50306-4

by Alan Bennett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 8, 2001

Short, pleasant, witty, and melancholy, though—á la Garrison Keillor—perhaps a richer treat for those who know and can hear...

bookshelf

A dryly amusing self-help parable—or shaggy-dog story—from English playwright (The Madness of George III) and scriptwriter Bennett, said to be “one of the most familiar voices on BBC radio.”

Middle-aged and childless Mr. and Mrs. Ransome live quiet lives in their London apartment—until one night, coming home from the opera (Così fan tutte—Mr. Ransome adores Mozart), they find that every stitch, scrap, and piece of their belongings have been stolen, down even to the very toilet paper (Mr. Ransome, and later a policeman, wipes with a sheet of the opera program, featuring Kiri Te Kanawa). The loss is discomfiting, needless to say, necessitating changes in Mr. Ransome’s unalterable routine (he’s a solicitor) and, essentials and replacements being needed at once, sending Mrs. Ransome into lowbrow neighborhood shops—a thrift shop, an Indian grocery—that she’s never been in before. But then something happens—and Mrs. Ransome begins liking not only the shops but her new, fresh, simplified way of life: the white walls, the beanbag chairs. It’s almost too bad when everything turns up again, in a warehouse in a dreary industrial park, where it’s been reassembled to a tee and where a young couple have been living in it—cooking, making love, even recording a tape of the latter, which, back at “home,” both Ransomes listen to, each unknown to the other. Mrs. Ransome also discovers Mr. Ransome’s pathetically small stash of porn (in a bookcase behind Salmon on Torts, which she takes for a cookbook). Is there a chance for renewal, emotional and sexual, for the Ransomes? Read and see. It won’t take long.

Short, pleasant, witty, and melancholy, though—á la Garrison Keillor—perhaps a richer treat for those who know and can hear the radio voice telling it.

Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2001

ISBN: 0-375-50306-4

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
KEEPING ON KEEPING ON
by Alan Bennett

- BOOK REVIEW
SMUT
by Alan Bennett

- BOOK REVIEW
A LIFE LIKE OTHER PEOPLE’S
by Alan Bennett

bookshelf

BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

bookshelf

Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.