|
Loading... The Clothes They Stood Up In (original 1996; edition 2001)by Alan Bennett
Work detailsThe Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett (1996)
 JenneB | Apr 2, 2013 |  This is the first Bennett book that I have actually read rather than listened to and this little novella is a charming little read. The Ransomes are a middle-aged friendless, childless couple who have settled into a rather dull routine who are unable to even communicate which one another. The Ransome's return from a night at the opera to find that they have been 'burgled. Robbed.' by very thorough thieves who stole absolutely everything in their flat down to floorboards, even cutting the telephone wires at the wall. As they come to terms with the theft the Ransomes realise that they are owned by their possessions rather than the other way around. Mr Ransome wants to merely replace their possessions and return to their former ways but Mrs Ransome starts to have little adventures like visiting a Pakistani grocers and a thrift shop as she slowly re-enters the broader world. The ending is perhaps a little predictable but for me this did not spoil the overall story. I read this book in one go and enjoyed it, the prose was beautiful, clipped and without an unneccessary word. (  ) PilgrimJess | Feb 21, 2013 | Another thoughtful and humorous novella by Alan Bennett. As with "The Uncommon Reader," this book has a preposterous premise, but Alan Bennett makes it work. And in fact, it's the ridiculousness of the premise that makes the book so compelling! Mr. and Mrs. Ransome come home from the opera one night to find that their flat has been completely cleaned out... down to the stove and appliances--including the casserole left to warm in the stove! This elicits very different reactions from Mr. and Mrs. Ransome, each of whom have been going through the motions for years, stuck in stagnation and complacency. I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as "The Uncommon Reader," I didn't feel the same kinship with the Ransomes as I did with the Queen in "Reader." Still, this is a funny and though-provoking book, absolutely worth the afternoon it will take you to read it. (  ) bkwurm | Jun 17, 2011 | I rather expected more from this book - it wasn't particularly humorous or much a fable - just a story about some sad little people (  ) sdunford | Dec 11, 2010 | In this slim, amusing novel, Mr. and Mrs. Ransome arrive home from the opera (Cosi Fan Tutte—Mr. Ransome is nigh-obsessed with Mozart) to find that someone has burgled their home. Although, as is explained, “burgle” isn’t quite the right word for it, because burglars normally take only the most expensive, marketable items. But these thieves have literally stolen every single thing in the Ransome’s flat, right down to the toilet paper in the bathroom and the casserole in the oven. And the oven, too. All they are left with is, as the title indicates, the clothes they are standing in. Mrs. Ransome, a sweet soul, finds herself strangely excited by their new material poverty. She explores the neighborhood, venturing into shops she never would have patronized before and enjoying the simple life to be had when one owns only the essentials. Mr. Ransome, however, sees only the inconvenience of it all. Mrs. Ransome is almost disappointed when their belongings turn up in a storage unit in an industrial park—though the fact that their belongings have all been reassembled perfectly into a semblance of their home and, in fact, a young couple has been living there and playing house does put a curious spin on the discovery. Bennett’s quiet, quirky novella does a delightful job of exposing all the small accommodations, evasions, and outright fabrications that allow two people to live together in some semblance of happiness, or at least of comfort. ( ) kmaziarz | Jul 6, 2010 |
 What would you do if you lost, at one fell swoop, every one of your possessions? What if a thief were to come in and take not only your television and your jewelry but your dirty dishes, your underwear, your light bulbs, even your toilet paper? This is what happens to Mr. and Mrs. Ransome, the bourgeois, habit-bound couple in Alan Bennett's sharp new novella, THE CLOTHES THEY STOOD UP IN (Random House, $14.95). It comes as quite a shock to them to discover just how much their lives have been controlled and defined by their objects, and when they are suddenly relieved of them the couple's reactions expose the irreconcilable differences in their characters: Mr. Ransome rigidly carries on as though nothing has changed, while his wife begins to feel rebellious twinges of -- dare she admit it? -- freedom and adventure. But then their paraphernalia is restored to them as mysteriously as it was taken away, and ''life returned to what Mrs. Ransome used to think of as normal but didn't now, quite.'' Their marriage, and they themselves, have subtly changed. "The Clothes They Stood Up In'' was a best seller in Britain, where Bennett, the author of the plays ''Habeas Corpus,'' ''Forty Years On,'' ''The Madness of George III'' and countless other films and television shows, is rightly thought of as a national treasure. The book will probably not do quite so well here, for the traits personified by the Ransomes -- emotional constipation on the husband's part, an almost pathological diffidence on the wife's -- are English vices and not American ones. (Our own run on quite different lines.) But it is a witty, dark piece of work, a happy evening's read and a tantalizing mental challenge to those of us who, like the Ransomes, find their lives encumbered and their senses blunted by too much stuff. Is contained in
References to this work on external resources.
|
 Google Books — Loading...Popular coversRatingAverage: (3.46)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1
Wikipedia in English
5
Even so, it's worth reading--about a middle-aged British couple who come home from the opera one evening to find that all of their belongings have been stolen, right down to the toilet paper. (