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Due Storie Sporche (2011)

by Alan Bennett(Favorite Author)

3.46 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

8845926354 (ISBN13: 9788845926358)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Adelphi

review 1: I fell in love with Bennett's 'The History Boys' after the 50 Years of the National Theatre on the BBC showed about 5 minutes of it. After that I was hooked.Unseemly: not proper or appropriate.'Smut' contains two short stories about, unsurprisingly, sex. From the title you can identify that those entwined within the stories of sex confront it in a somewhat old-fashioned sense. Sex is either very, very good or quite, quite bad.In the first, a middle-aged woman discovers enjoyment in watching youngsters have sex, intermittently whilst acting as a fake patient for student doctors. The theme of acting and putting on another face is prominent through-out (also found in 'The History Boys') and strikes to the heart of how most of us live our lives. In any number of ways we are ac... moreting as part of our daily routine; be it with make-up, with lies or with blatant hypocrisies.The second story is bit more involved: a (unknown) gay man marries a rich orphan woman. His mother disproves, his father cares little and the whole thing is intertwined with blackmail and lies and adultery. Again, the theme of acting belongs solidly to this story, though the lies are far worse than could be found in the first unseemly story.As to be expected, these stories are different to the play (admittedly the only play I've read) but they are still sublimely Bennett and rather quintessentially English.
review 2: I grew up in West Yorkshire, fifteen years behind Alan Bennett but his characters, situations and vocabulary are very familiar to me. Like the title, many of the words and phrases I have not encountered since my Yorkshire childhood, and he constantly provides opportunities for unexpected nostalgia. Bennett is the king of observation and nuance, and his Talking Heads series remains a master class in the art of monologue, skillfully teasing out the comedy within life's tragedy. In these two short and unseemly stories he contents himself with poking gentle fun at ordinary people. The fact that Bennett escaped his working class background allows him the opportunity for self-mockery. There are members of the working class who are fiercely loyal to their origins, and there are those who aspire to something better, although in Bennett's stories they usually only have a vague notion of what that something better might be. To a lesser extent I also escaped; the nice detached house I live in far beyond my own aspirations and those of my parents in our terrace house back in the 1950's. And so when Bennett pokes fun at ordinary, middle class people he is poking fun at himself, and the aspirations of his parents. One step removed, I am also the butt of his jokes.Of the two stories I enjoyed the first, The Greening of Mrs Donaldson, funny with unexpected (and smutty) twists and turns. In places it is laugh-out-loud funny, as my wife discovered to her chagrin in the doctor's waiting room. Mrs. Donaldson is very ordinary, and it is this ordinariness that provides the humour. Events keep taking her rather by surprise but in reacting to them she finds depths of character that she didn't know were there. This would make a superb little play for television. Come on, BBC, what are you waiting for?The second story, The Shielding of Mrs Forbes, I enjoyed less. It has a darker side to it, and some of the humour is less good-natured. But again, the strength of the story lies in the way these ordinary people deal with the unusual situations which seem to ensnare them. One oft-repeated line, spoken by many of Bennett's characters, is: "I didn't say anything". The character thinks he is showing restraint; we know he is showing cowardice. Casual but insightful remarks such as these were probably observed and noted down decades ago, but here they are, perfectly in character, polished and presented for our entertainment. I am glad that Bennett chose to something. less

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