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The third book in his sweeping Clayhanger Family series, These Twain recounts the courtship and marriage of Hilda Lessways and Edwin Clayhanger. It's a nuanced, complex depiction of the ups and downs of long-term intimate relationships, focusing on the ways that marriage can both help and hurt people, often at the same time..
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midnightblues same series
midnightblues same series
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Maybe the best of the whole Clayhanger trilogy: Edwin and Hilda are now an established married couple. Edwin's business is progressing; Hilda's son (by her bigamous first marriage) is an adolescent.
But the small but constant annoyances of marriage are ever present. Bennett does an ASTONISHINGLY good job at getting into the minds and feelings of two individuals, yoked together for better or worse.
Superb.
But the small but constant annoyances of marriage are ever present. Bennett does an ASTONISHINGLY good job at getting into the minds and feelings of two individuals, yoked together for better or worse.
Superb.
This is the third book in the Clayhanger series, and my favorite. In These Twain, the somewhat-starcrossed lovers from the first two books, Edwin and Hilda Clayhanger, embark on married life. They fight a lot. I read this book in the 1990s and haven’t re-read it, but what I remember most vividly are the descriptions of how angry they get at each other. Edwin Clayhanger thinks how he’d like to strangle Hilda, but then he goes for a walk and after a while he calms down, and when he comes home, he loves her again. At that time I was dating someone who made me really angry fairly often, and I thought These Twain was incredibly realistic. Bennett’s World-War-I-themed book (The Roll-Call) will come up in 1918, and is the last in the show more Clayhanger series. show less
This was my least favourite of the trilogy I think. I just found the constant changes of heart from both Edwin and Hilda a bit tiresome, and the endless internal monologues they have without actually saying anything out loud to each other.
I'm up to about chapter 3 and I just don't know if I can take more of Hilda and Edwin. Giving it a break and maybe some more later.
back cover: 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars From the back cover of this novel..., 20 Aug 2006
By Angel Silver "Angel" (England) - See all my reviews
"The final volume in the Clayhanger trilogy, following CLAY-HANGER and HILDA LESSWAYS. In many ways this is the most accomplished of the three novels, for Bennett, drawing together the threads of his trilogy, presents already-established personalities in confrontation. Hilda is now married to Edwin Clay-Hanger and the two, with Hilda's son by her disastrous `marriage' to George Cannon, are living in Bursley. As they cope with immediate tensions and with old wounds they are forced continually to reassess their relationship. Bennett is at his best here, show more recreating a society and its characters -- Auntie Hamps and Tertius Ingpen among them -- and achieving a remarkably subtle and biting portrait of a marriage." show less
5.0 out of 5 stars From the back cover of this novel..., 20 Aug 2006
By Angel Silver "Angel" (England) - See all my reviews
"The final volume in the Clayhanger trilogy, following CLAY-HANGER and HILDA LESSWAYS. In many ways this is the most accomplished of the three novels, for Bennett, drawing together the threads of his trilogy, presents already-established personalities in confrontation. Hilda is now married to Edwin Clay-Hanger and the two, with Hilda's son by her disastrous `marriage' to George Cannon, are living in Bursley. As they cope with immediate tensions and with old wounds they are forced continually to reassess their relationship. Bennett is at his best here, show more recreating a society and its characters -- Auntie Hamps and Tertius Ingpen among them -- and achieving a remarkably subtle and biting portrait of a marriage." show less
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Author Information
193+ Works 6,838 Members
Arnold Bennett was born on May 27, 1867 in Hanley, Staffordshire, England. He began his working career as a law clerk and later he left the legal field and became an editor for the magazine Woman. His first novel was "A Man from the North." He wrote several novels set in Hanley, the town where he was born. These are known as the Five Town novels. show more Other titles include "The Babylon Hotel," "The Truth about an Author," and "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day." Bennett won the 1923 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel "Riceyman Steps." "The Journal of Arnold Bennett" was published posthumously in three volumes. Bennett was also the author of "Hugo" which was made into a major motion picture in 2011 starring Jude law and Ben Kingsley, directed by Martin Scorsese. During WWI, Bennett was Director of Propaganda for France at the Ministry of Information. (At that time "propaganda" did not have the negative connotations it would have later in the twentieth century.) This appointment was based on the recommendation of Lord Beaverbrook, who also recommended him as Deputy Minister of that department at the end of the war. Bennett refused a knighthood in 1918. He died in London of typhoid fever on March 27, 1931. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- De tu
- Original publication date
- 1916
- People/Characters
- Edwin Clayhanger
- Important places
- Five Towns, Staffordshire, England, UK; Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, UK
- First words
- In the year 1892 Bleakridge, residential suburb of Bursley, was still most plainly divided into old and new,--that is to say, into the dull red or dull yellow with stone facings, and the bright red with terra-cotta gimcracker... (show all)y.
- Quotations
- He had now learned that profound lesson that an individual must be taken or left in entirety, and that you cannot change an object merely because you love it.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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Statistics
- Members
- 135
- Popularity
- 242,043
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.59)
- Languages
- Catalan, Czech, English, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 19
- ASINs
- 5
