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Loading... The Clothes They Stood Up Inby Alan Bennett
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Small, weird, funny, unexpected, fantastic. ( )What would happen if you came home to find your house completely empty - Every piece of furniture, every picture, every physical memory of your life was gone? The Clothes the Stood Up In, explores the stress of loss and the chance of rebirth. Maurice and Rosemary Ransome return home from a night at the opera to discover that their flat has been burglarized. Everything, from the casserole in the oven to the toilet paper, has been taken. In the weeks following the bizarre theft, the middle-aged couple are suddenly forced to answer some difficult questions about themselves, namely, "Who are we without our possessions?" Their individual reactions to the situation highlight their response to this question. After reading The Uncommon Reader and loving every moment of it, I was interested in finding more by the same author. From the description on it's cover, this book sounded like a light, amusing read. Since this is technically Bennett's first novel (novella might be more appropriate), I went in without any real expectations. Unfortunately, I was not impressed by this book. The premise is intriguing and has a lot of potential and the prose is at times very eloquent, but it just didn't do anything for me. With a topic that is capable of such depth, this book could have been so much more. It started out all right but towards the end, it seemed to go off in a different and unrelated direction, almost as if the author himself wasn't sure where his story was going. I don't regret reading this book. It was entertaining, at times funny, and even a little bittersweet. It was enjoyable. Not nearly as enjoyable or thought-provoking as Uncommon Reader, but not a bad read either. It is not a book that will stick with me for long, nor one that I will find myself thinking over a year from now. I have no plan to read this again or add it to my collection. I would recommend this book to someone who is a fan of Bennett's other work and perhaps to anyone who enjoys British humor. The last quarter of the book contains some sexual content in the form of an audio tape recording. Nothing is explicitly described, but it could be uncomfortable for those who are sensitive to it. Those who wish to avoid such content might want to skip this read altogether. odd, funny, a little sweet, a lot sad 0.152 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0375503064, Hardcover)The Ransomes had been burgled. "Robbed," Mrs. Ransome said. "Burgled," Mr. Ransome corrected. Premises were burgled; persons were robbed. Mr. Ransome was a solicitor by profession and thought words mattered. Though "burgled" was the wrong word too. Burglars select; they pick; they remove one item and ignore others. There is a limit to what burglars can take: they seldom take easy chairs, for example, and even more seldom settees. These burglars did. They took everything.This swift-moving comic fable will surprise you with its concealed depths. When the sedate Ransomes return from the opera to find their Notting Hill flat stripped absolutely bare—down to the toilet paper off the roll (a hard-to-find shade of forget-me-not blue)—they face a dilemma: Who are they without the things they've spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly the world is full of unlimited and frightening possibility. But just as they begin adjusting to this giddy freedom, a newfound interest in sex, and a lack of comfy chairs, a surreal reversal of events causes them to question their assumptions yet again. The Ransomes' bafflement is the reader's delight. Alan Bennett's gentle but scathing wit, unerring ear for dialogue, and sense of the absurd make The Clothes They Stood Up In a memorable exploration of where in life true riches lie. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:55 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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