I picked up Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader at the library last Saturday. I opened it up when I got home intending to just dip in. Yeah, right. A couple hours later I finished the book with a happy sigh. It’s a slim, quick read, a novella, and utterly delightful.
The Queen is out in the garden one day chasing down her corgis. They are out barking like crazy. In the back garden by the kitchen she spies the library bookmobile. She’s never noticed it there before, and feeling concern of what they might think of her barking dogs, HRM goes to apologize for the ruckus. The only ones in the Bookmobile are Mr. Hutchings, the librarian, and Norman a young man who works in the kitchens and is very fond of reading. The Queen feels obligated to borrow a book once she is there and Mr. Hutchings, a sad excuse for a librarian if there ever was one, cannot manage even one recommendation. So the Queen takes out an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel. She doesn’t much like the book, but brings it back the next week and decides to borrow another. This one Norman suggests and she likes it very much. The Queen becomes hooked on reading.
Soon Norman is promoted from the kitchens to be the Queen’s personal book recommender and reading partner. And it isn’t long before the Queen’s reading habits begin to interfere with the performance of her duties. She learns how to read in the car while appearing to be waving to the crowds and enjoying the parade or whatever she is out for. She stops asking people she meets about traffic and where they are from and instead leaves them speechless by asking what they are reading. The Queen also begins to be bored by all the ribbon cuttings, and factory tours and the whole performance piece of her duties. Her staff find a way to get rid of Norman by sending him off to college, all expenses paid. I won’t tell you what happens after that, only that the book is a pleasant afternoon’s reading and that you might want to have some tea and scones or cucumber sandwiches or something along with it.
Part of the delight of the book is the telescoped process of becoming a bookworm. You will recognize yourself, reader, in the things the Queen does and says. You will know the devastation of packing books for a trip and the luggage they are packed in not arriving with you. You will sympathize with the Queen’s desire to hurry through a task in order to get back to a book. And you will understand all too well the need to take a book with you everywhere and the desire to talk to someone, anyone, about it.
Bennett, whom I have never read, has a great sense of humor. At one point the Queen naturally wants to meet the authors she has been reading. Because she is the Queen she can throw a party and have them come. But the party does not go well, at least for the Queen. She finds she doesn’t know what to say the the authors and they aren’t the people she imagined them to be. And so,
authors, she soon decided were probably best met with in the pages of their novels, and as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
A sentiment we can all relate to with some favorite author or another.
If you are looking for an afternoon’s entertainment with a bookish twist, you cant’ go wrong with The Uncommon Reader.
This sounds great! Thank you, -Care
Sounds fantastic! I’m beginning to think that maybe in 2008, I should quit blogging and attack my TBR list with a vengeance.
I don’t think I could enjoy a book that was so completely implausible. The Queen is a highly cultured woman who certainly wouldn’t need reading advice from a kitchen hand, and of course a bookmobile would never get anywhere near her. I also seriously doubt that any of her dogs would misbehave!
To use a real person in a novel and then completely alter their character seems not only disrespectful but just plain gimmicky. It’s the idea that Queen Elizabeth might be a secret rebel that gives the book zing. If it was entirely fictional, with (as the movies say) no relation to real persons, it probably wouldn’t be of much interest. It’s the hook into reality that gets people excited, and I think there is something wrong with that. It feeds into our lust for scandal, which, as we will recall, killed a certain rebellious royal.
I just generally get nervous when writers blur the lines between fact and fiction because it’s usually fact that loses out in favour of the more emotionally satisfying fiction. This is why I shy away from historical fiction. I’d rather know what really happened than read a ripping yarn and getting false ideas about the past. We work so hard to learn things that are true in school, why read books that might lead us to believe things that are false?
Oh, and the Queen has her own libraries, with 125,000 books and 16 librarians. It would be more but monarchs over the ages have turned their libraries over to the British Library and then started over.
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=21
OooOOoooo! An online exhibition of treasures from her library can be seen here:
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/egallery/category.asp?category=CABOOKS+AND+MANUSCRIPTS&row=7
I’m glad I looked into it!
I’ve read about this one on several blogs and all the posts have been glowing. It is definitely on my list, and the fact that you mention that it is a short, quick read appeals, too.
Oh, Sylvia, I’m definitely mentioning you as my favorite commenter next year …
Stefanie — I appreciated Sylvia’s comment
but I still want to read this book! I think I’d find a good afternoon’s enjoyment, just like you did.
I really liked this one as well.
Glad you enjoyed this! It was one of my favorites from last year. Personally, I identified with The Queen’s opinion of Henry James: “It was Henry James she was reading one teatime when she said out loud ‘Oh do get on.’”
My husband, the more discerning reader of the two of us, swears I should be reading more Bennett… I think he’s right.
I love Alan Bennett’s plays, and I’ve wanted to pick this up. I love his sense of humor. Thanks for the review, I am putting this on my list!
While I have to agree with Sylvia that it’s gimmicky to use a highly altered personality as the hook, it sounds like it’s fairly obvious that the humor in the book mitigates the affect.
While the Queen has a magnificent library, somehow, I don’t think it contains many books that could be read curled up on the couch in front of the fire on a cold night.
I would hope most people realize that the Queen must be well read just to maintain her role.
I enjoy historical novels, knowing as I begin that the author has paid fast and loose with specific facts. (It’s fun to catch the author in, what is to me, an obvious error.) I enjoy the setting, the atmosphere, how the author weaves the fiction around the fact. And several have encouraged me to do a bit more research into what actually happened.
Thank you Sylvia for your research/links – I can see I”ll be spending some time on those sites.
Care, you’re welcome and thanks for stopping by.
Emily, you had better not quit blogging!
Sylvia, I see your point and if the book were trying to present itself as historically accurate I’d be miffed. But it is done in such a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek way that it is clear we are not supposed to take it seriously. Bennett does mention the Queen’s libraries and the Queen does read some books from them but not many because the books in her libraries are more for preservation and collection’s sake than for general reading. Or at least that is the reason given in the book. Thanks for all the cool links. I wonder if one has to be a British subject to be one of the Queen’s 16 librarians?
Jenclair, it’s definitely short and quick and I’m not a fast reader.
Dorothy, it will be the perfect relaxing and untaxing read for after a long bike ride or run.
3m, when I saw it in the bookstore I wasn’t sure if it would be worthwhile so I borrowed from the library. Turns out I needn’t have worried.
Zan, I did laugh at that part about Henry James! Since this was such a success I definitely want to read more Bennett.
Gentle Reader, nice to know his plays are good too. I will have to try them.
Pamela, you are right about historical fiction. It is fun but you can’t believe it completely. I like it too when an author makes me want to find out what really happened.
This was a goodin wasn’t it?! I really enjoy Alan Bennett’s writing.
As Sylvia rightly points out, it is highly unlikely that the Queen would actually walk the corgies herself, stumble across a mobile library, have opportunity let alone the desire to converse with the kitchen staff or that she would sloppily eschew her royal duties in order ot squeeze a few extra chapters in.
But for me it is the absurdity and implausability of the situation that makes Bennett’s work so throughly enjoyable! Bennett in his work loves to coax you into suspending disbelief and just running with the very ‘what if’ outlandish tale he has humourous crafted for you, tales that few others could get away with.
I especially enjoyed the characterisation of the Queen’s Kiwi advisor who couldn’t seem to get past his insecurity at originating from the ‘colony’, and also when the Queen seeks the somewhat conservative French President’s opinion on Jean Genet! Funny stuff.
This sounds delightful to me. The Queen is such a figurehead that it’s quite a British tradition to project all kinds of unusual fantasies onto her terribly respectable frame. I like to think she has a lively sense of humour and laps it all up. I’ll certainly be looking out for this!
Cass, yes the absurdity is what helps make it so funny. Sir Kevin was a hoot and I snickered whenever the Queen would say things that would make him wince. And yes, asking the French President what he thought of Jean Genet was worth a good giggle.
Litlove, I’m sure it would get a laugh or two out of you, or at the very least, lots of broad smiles.
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I need to read this book! Don’t you just hate when you get sucked into a book you’d just intended to dip into? I know – I don’t either.
Heh, yeah, it really stinks when that happens