A Life Like Other People's: From the acclaimed Untold Stories

This is only the second book I have read of Alan Bennett. Having just seen his new play "The Habit of Art" which was very funny, giving you a special insight into the lives of the characters & the era it was set in I felt driven to experience his other works. This book tells the story of his family life warts & all. It is very honest even about his own failings & I found it a very moving book.

a very good read (0/0 people found this helpful)

You can take a Loiner out of Yorkshire but you can't take ... (0/9 people found this helpful)

As a renegade Loiner (a native of Leeds, born 1927) who moved to Cheshire in 1954, I am qualified to criticise this book by another renegade Loiner.

Bennett, like most of us, is a prisoner of his upbringing. As Philip Larkin put it, They f*** you up, your mom and dad, they may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra, just for you.

Alan's father was bullied by his stepmother. She made him leave school at 11 to become a butcher. Alan's maternal grandfather drowned himself in a canal but the shamed family said he died of a heart attack. When Alan's mother had one of a series of bouts of depression/dementia, his father revealed the family secret.

Alan's "Mam and Dad" (always capitalised in the book) wanted a Life Like Other People's but could not escape their past. Moving from Leeds to the Dales did not help. Alan escaped to Oxford, then fame and a fortune from his flair for comedy. But on TV he never smiles, let alone laughs. His sad, serious face reveals his upbringing.

He is renowned as a brilliant observer of people. His plays and films portray people who have lived lives not quite like other people. His wry sense of humour is based mainly on other people's misfortune.

I found the book not easy to read because of his writing style. It seems affected, almost pretentious. Perhaps he writes this way to show that despite his education he retains some of his Yorkshire grammar. Typical examples include stood instead of standing and Mam, Dad and me instead of Mam, Dad and I as the subject of a sentence.

There are too few commas and too many semi-colons. He has perhaps never read the Beachcomber column in the Daily Express (too right-wing for Bennett). It sometimes features the Apostropher Royal whose role is to deal with the national shortage of commas caused by greengrocers using them as unnecessary apostrophes.

I had to read some sentences twice to derive the meaning. Some are far too long--63 words in one sentence. Too many sentences have the subject at the end. I'm not a pedant but I prefer books that are easier to read.

The page numbers in this book have braces {curly brackets} as though ashamed of their upbringing. Was this Bennett's twee idea, or did the Faber and Faber designers think that numbers in braces were well suited to the author's writing style?

The book is worth reading to understand why Bennett is the way he is. I feel sorry for him but I still like his plays and films.

A Life Like Other Peoples, And Well Worth Recording (0/0 people found this helpful)

A Life Like Other People's, which I keep wanting to call A Life Amongst Others though I have no idea why, is about his formative years though mainly it looks at the relationships of his parents. I don't have any of Bennett's previous diaries and memoires to compare this too, though I will be making sure that changes, though what I have always loved about Bennett is his `real writing'. He looks at people, and himself, and the actions of real people their emotions there thoughts the whole gambit. There are no tricks and though there is often drama its never written to be dramatic or to gain readers its simply life.

The simplistic and honest writing style is incredibly endearing. Scenes can be quite harrowing and emotional and yet there will be some slight comedy around the corner, its not intentional or planned it's just the way it is. Two scenes that really hit me were between him and his mother, which almost made me cry, and his mother searching for her sister in a dementia ward. I loved the story of his parents wedding and why there were no pictures as his parents didn't want any `splother'. You will have to read the book to find out just what that means and how they got around it and I cant recommend you do that highly enough.

Beautiful writing - Bennett in top form (40/42 people found this helpful)

These days Alan Bennett is enjoying a well deserved renaissance with a new play The Habit of Art opening this month in London, plus the recent hit play/film The History Boys, novel The Uncommon Reader and Pen/Ackerley Prize winning non-fiction collection Untold Stories remain fresh in our minds. This new volume was lifted in it's entirety from Untold Stories, and deservedly so. In A Life Like Other People's the openly gay Bennett tells with great wit and measured sentimentality the story of his parents and maternal aunts.

We are treated to truly inspired reminisces of the author's earliest and formative years. The story of how his parents met, and their absurd wedding ceremony (or lack there of), his mothers mental illness, and his father's all consuming steadfastness. There is a poignant scene of visiting his mother in an asylum; a harrowing scene of searching for an aunt with Alzheimer's who's slipped away from her hospital ward. There are revelations of family secrets, as well as ribald stories of marital misadventure. Finally there is a heartrending scene in a nursing home between mother and son that left this reader gob smacked by the purity of the writing.

This volume (which I ordered from Amazon.UK) is a precious gift of memories and observations, anecdotes and personal judgments harsh, humorous and unabashedly honest

A Life Like Other People's: From the acclaimed Untold Stories

Alan Bennett

Reader Reviews:

Typical Yorkshire Bennett (1/1 people found this helpful)

a very good read (0/0 people found this helpful)

You can take a Loiner out of Yorkshire but you can't take ... (0/9 people found this helpful)

A Life Like Other Peoples, And Well Worth Recording (0/0 people found this helpful)

Beautiful writing - Bennett in top form (40/42 people found this helpful)

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