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Summary
Summary
Un recorrido, ameno, divertido y gamberro para conocer Cataluña a través de más de 200 ideas para conocerla mejor. El libro nos da la oportunidad de descubrir una cultura llena de matices, anécdotas, iconos universales e historias desconocidas. Original y sorprendente, el libro resulta un viaje de contrastes, una útil herramienta para acercarnos a una Cataluña que nos es muy familiar pero a la vez desconocida.
Summary
From the author of The History Boys and The Clothes They Stood Up In
A deliciously funny novella that celebrates the pleasure of reading. When the Queen in pursuit of her wandering corgis stumbles upon a mobile library she feels duty bound to borrow a book. Aided by Norman, a young man from the palace kitchen who frequents the library, Bennett describes the Queen's transformation as she discovers the liberating pleasures of the written word. With the poignant and mischievous wit of The History Boys , England's best loved author revels in the power of literature to change even the most uncommon reader's life.
Author Notes
Bennett was born in Armley in Leeds, West Yorkshire. He decided to apply for a scholarship at Oxford University. He was accepted by Exeter College, Oxford from which he graduated with a first-class degree in history.
He was born on May 9, 1934; he is an English author, actor, humorist and playwright. Bennett was made an Honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford in 1987. He was also awarded a D.Litt by the University of Leeds in 1990 and an Hon. PhD from Kingston in 1996.
In October 2008 Bennett announced that he was donating his entire archive of working papers, unpublished manuscripts, diaries and books to the Bodleian Library free of charge, as a gesture of thanks and repaying a debt he felt he owed to the UK's social welfare system that had given him educational opportunities which his humble family background would otherwise never have afforded.
In 2015 his title, Six Poets: Hardy to Larkin: An Anthology by Alan Bennett, made The New Zealand Best Seller List. He also made the list in 2016 with his title The Lady in the Van. (Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Briskly original and subversively funny, this novella from popular British writer Bennett (Untold Stories; Tony-winning play The History Boys) sends Queen Elizabeth II into a mobile library van in pursuit of her runaway corgis and into the reflective, observant life of an avid reader. Guided by Norman, a former kitchen boy and enthusiast of gay authors, the queen gradually loses interest in her endless succession of official duties and learns the pleasure of such a "common" activity. With "the dawn of her sensibility... mistaken for the onset of senility," plots are hatched by the prime minister and the queen's staff to dispatch Norman and discourage the queen's preoccupation with books. Ultimately, it is her own growing self-awareness that leads her away from reading and toward writing, with astonishing results. Bennett has fun with the proper behavior and protocol at the palace, and the few instances of mild coarseness seem almost scandalous. There are lessons packed in here, but Bennett doesn't wallop readers with them. It's a fun little book. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Who would guess that reading books could prompt a constitutional crisis? In Britain this strange and unusual scenario does indeed play out, at least in this delightful political-social comedy by a celebrated British writer. One day the queen takes inadvertent advantage of a bookmobile that happens to arrive at a Buckingham Palace back door; she rather accidentally borrows a book. She'd never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people. As surprising to herself as to those who know her, the queen develops into a dedicated, avid reader of serious literature, and the court and her government are sent reeling by this new royal practice as well as by her newfound knowledge about all kinds of things. When she turns from the joy of reading to a desire to write, the consequences are jolting. In the wake of the popularity of the movie The Queen, this crafy work of satire should find an appreciative American audience.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
In Alan Bennett's novel, the queen discovers the joy of reading. BY JEREMY McCARTER ALAN BENNETT belongs to a generation of British playwrights for whom all the world's a faculty club, and they've got tenure. Like Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn, Bennett ambles through different styles and forms as he pleases, alternating the erudite fun of "The History Boys" - the classroom play (and later movie) in which the best jokes are in French - with diaries, short stories and the odd divertissement for The London Review of Books. What's most appealing in Bennett's writing, though, is often the least donnish. "The Uncommon Reader," his new novella, is a kind of palace fairy tale for grown-ups. Once again he tells a story about an eccentric old lady, a character type he seems to enjoy. (He wrote a wonderful memoir, "The Lady in the Van," about the nut job who lived in his garden for 15 years.) This time, his odd, isolated heroine is the queen of England. The story of her budding love affair with literature blends the comic and the poignant so smoothly it can only be by Bennett. It's not his very best work, but it distills his virtues well enough to suggest how such a distinctive style might have arisen. Does Bennett have an affinity with Kafka because he wrote a delightfully weird play about him or did he write the play because of the affinity? Either way, the story bears a trace of Kafka's ever-so-slightly quizzical habit of describing how bolts from the blue can intrude upon humdrum lives. On a walk one day, the royal dogs veer off their usual course, leading the queen (who's unnamed, but Elizabeth-like) toward the palace kitchen. There's a library van in the driveway that she's never seen before and wouldn't have visited if she had: "She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people." To avoid embarrassing the librarian, the queen fumblingly borrows a volume by Ivy Compton-Burnett. Enjoying the experience, she returns to choose, with greater confidence, Nancy Mitford's "Pursuit of Love." ("Novels seldom came as well connected as this and the queen felt correspondingly reassured.") As the book-struck queen begins to devour Henry James, the Brontes and modern writers she'd knighted without having read, the story reminds you that its author has sketch comedy in his bones. From "Beyond the Fringe," the Oxbridge satirical triumph of the early 1960s, Bennett absorbed this logic: a comic premise must be teased out, stroke by stroke, to reach its full hilarity. And so, page by page, the queen's reading wreaks ever greater havoc on the lives of equerries, family members and subjects. The prime minister is assigned (and grows exasperated by) his homework; the corgis destroy books on sight. Even the queen's small talk with her subjects, usually confined to unthinking chitchat about traffic, turns chaotic when she starts asking what they're reading: "To this very few of Her Majesty's loyal subjects had a ready answer (though one did try: 'The Bible?')." Around this point in the story, Evelyn Waugh or Kingsley Amis would be cackling about the satiric pain they're about to inflict, but Bennett pulls back, leaving comic avenues unexplored. (No literary critics are sent to the Tower.) As in so many of his stories - say, "Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet," in which an aging store clerk starts a peculiar but edifying affair with her foot-fetishizing podiatrist - Bennett seems less interested in wringing out every laugh than in showing us a cosseted soul stumbling toward liberation. In a characteristically bitter-sweet touch, he no sooner describes how reading has made the queen less maniacally fastidious about her schedule and wardrobe - that is, more of a human being like the rest of us - than her aides start condescending to her. "Probably Alzheimer's," says one. At moments like these, it's not Bennett's comic sense or flair for language that sets him apart from his contemporaries but his empathy for the marginal and misunderstood, a legacy, maybe, of having been a socially awkward lad from Yorkshire. Like most of Bennett's fiction, this is a slender work - an afternoon's read. Yet even at this length, it feels a trifle thin. Neither the humor nor the pathos seems packed as tightly here as in "The Clothes They Stood Up In," the tale of a dowdy middle-aged couple losing all their possessions that is, for me, his saddest, funniest story. Still, his account of the queen's adventures often made me laugh out loud, and, after Helen Mirren's performance in "The Queen," offered yet another reason to think warmly of Her Majesty, another reminder that marble has veins. Jeremy McCarter, the theater critic at New York magazine, is editing a collection of Henry Fairlie's writing.
Guardian Review
Let this column - a republican, ever since the usurpation of the enlightened elective monarchy of the Anglo-Saxons by those thugs, the Normans - at least join in the jamboree by celebrating the timely reprint of this little gem. You may well have read it already. You should have. It was first published in 2006 in the LRB, and released as a hardback in 2007. If there is only going to be one good thing to come out of the jubilee, let it be this. The plot, for those unfamiliar with it: the Queen, herding unruly corgis, discovers a mobile library parked by the Buck House kitchens. Noblesse oblige and all that, so she borrows a book - Ivy Compton-Burnett - and then, despite its being a slog, she borrows another (Nancy Mitford - more to her taste) and another . . . and with the help of Norman, the autodidact gay kitchen porter, becomes an avid reader, eventually reading Proust at Balmoral instead of shooting stags. Her courtiers hate the habit; they perceive - hilariously - that reading is "elitist", and suspect incipient dementia. Bennett's jokes are so beautifully modulated that I would rather not spoil them. But he is subversively sound, I think, on the nature of the monarchy. There are two good reasons for its abolition: it infantilises us, and, in turn, it deranges the royals. Bennett illuminatingly imagines the Queen being at first daunted by Jane Austen: so far distant in terms of rank, she is unable to appreciate the - to her - relatively small social divisions between Austen's characters. This is the most polite way imaginable of accusing the Queen of being out of touch; but then, as Bennett observes, commoners too lose their minds when summoned to the presence. Look at poor Andrew Marr's The Diamond Queen, for instance. The mistake, of course, is to see Elizabeth "Windsor" as a person. "She ain't no human being," as John Lydon correctly observed in 1977; she's a constitutional construct. If the blandness of her public utterances, or phatic questions to those who have come to be ennobled by her ("have you come far?" and so on; Bennett has commoners freaked out when she starts asking them what they've read lately instead) can exasperate, one can expect nothing more from a figurehead, whose expression must remain the same whatever the weather. (One perversely looks forward to the ascension of Prince Charles, who seems to entertain no such concept of discretion, and who might wear out public acceptance of the hereditary principle even before his reign ends in the traditional manner.) Hence our desire to draw expressions on the blankness, and the way she is said to pop up in our dreams (do republicans dream less of her than monarchists?). Like Jesus, she is an idealised projection of our own best selves, which is why Bennett has mapped his own literary sensibilities, more or less, on to hers. As with the popular children's work, The Queen's Knickers, The Uncommon Reader is a piece of audacious lese majeste which, in an earlier age, would have put its author's head on a spike. (As I write these words, I am still reeling from the news that an allegedly genuine pair of the Queen's knickers has been sold for pounds 11,000 on eBay.) It is a testament to Bennett's extraordinary skill - his genius, even - that we assent to the proposition, which would in real life make a cat laugh, that the Queen could be capable of becoming a reader of fine discernment. And not only that: but also that we can imagine her making the wonderful speech at the end of the book ("one has given one's white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood . . ."). It is a fantasy on the same level of wish-fulfilment but with, I suspect, even less basis in reality than Hugh Grant's speech standing up to the Americans in Love, Actually The difference between that wretched film and this book is that Bennett knows what he is doing. (After a disastrous party she stuffs with writers: "Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met with in the pages of their novels . . .") And it isn't really about the Queen at all. It's about literature, the ultimate democracy. To order The Uncommon Reader for pounds 6.39 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846. - Nicholas Lezard As with the popular children's work, The Queen's Knickers, The Uncommon Reader is a piece of audacious lese majeste which, in an earlier age, would have put its author's head on a spike. (As I write these words, I am still reeling from the news that an allegedly genuine pair of the Queen's knickers has been sold for pounds 11,000 on eBay.) It is a testament to [Bennett]'s extraordinary skill - his genius, even - that we assent to the proposition, which would in real life make a cat laugh, that the Queen could be capable of becoming a reader of fine discernment. And not only that: but also that we can imagine her making the wonderful speech at the end of the book ("one has given one's white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood . . ."). It is a fantasy on the same level of wish-fulfilment but with, I suspect, even less basis in reality than Hugh Grant's speech standing up to the Americans in Love, Actually - Nicholas Lezard.
Kirkus Review
A royal fable celebrating the transformative properties (and a few of the unsettling consequences) of reading as an obsession. In a country of commoners, the uncommon reader is the Queen. She has never been a reader, because reading isn't something that "one" (as she invariably refers to herself) does. Yet an unlikely incident involving her dogs and a mobile library making its weekly appearance outside Buckingham Palace moves her to borrow a book. And then another. And another, until reading has become her life's focus. Though the prolific Bennett is better known in America for his plays and screenplays (his Tony Award-winning play, The History Boys, was made into a movie in 2007), his subtle wit and tonal command show why he is so beloved in his native Britain. Yet this slight novella feels padded, because once he puts his plot into motion--the Queen reads, reading changes the Queen, others are uncomfortable with the changes--he doesn't really have anywhere to take it except in circles, as it moves toward what might be a surprise ending. There are some funny bits: her questioning of the president of France about Jean Genet (of whom he hasn't a clue) and the disdain she develops for the "perpetually irritating Henry James." She also enjoys a lovely visit with one of her literary subjects, Alice Munro. Perhaps the keenest insight here concerns her difficulty with Jane Austen, whose novels pivot so frequently on class distinctions that the Queen herself has never experienced. Those who love reading will recognize the process of the Queen's enrapturing, how one book inevitably leads to another, and so many others, and that the richness of the reading life will always be offset by the recognition that time grows shorter as the list of books grows longer. Yet this is ultimately a breezy afternoon's read, one that doesn't seem like it took all that much more effort to write. If, as the Queen discovers, reading is "a muscle" that she has "seemingly developed," this novella reads like light calisthenics rather than heavy lifting. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
British screenwriter, playwright, and novelist Bennett, author of the Tony Award-winning play The History Boys, has written a wry and unusual story about the subversive potential of reading. Bennett posits a theoretical situation in which Queen Elizabeth II becomes an avid reader, and the new ideas she thus encounters change the way she thinks and reigns. Coming upon a traveling library near Buckingham Palace, Elizabeth, who almost never reads, decides to take a look. Mostly out of politeness, she begins to borrow from the library via a kitchen page. As she begins to view reading as her "duty," a way "to find out what people are like," she is exposed to increasingly sophisticated books and ideas that criticize society. As Elizabeth loses interest in the chain of ship launches and groundbreakings that make up her reign, her staff becomes resentful, and the story ends in an unexpected way. Though the book is at times annoyingly snobbish and harping that people do not read enough, the unusual story line keeps readers engrossed. Recommended for larger public libraries and libraries where British literature is popular.-Christina Bauer, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber. 'Now that I have you to myself,' said the Queen, smiling to left and right as they glided through the glittering throng, 'I've been longing to ask you about the writer Jean Genet.' 'Ah,' said the president. 'Oui.' The 'Marseillaise' and the national anthem made for a pause in the proceedings, but when they had taken their seats Her Majesty turned to the president and resumed. 'Homosexual and jailbird, was he nevertheless as bad as he was painted? Or, more to the point,' and she took up her soup spoon, 'was he as good?' Unbriefed on the subject of the glabrous playwright and novelist, the president looked wildly about for his minister of culture. But she was being addressed by the Archbishop of Can-terbury. 'Jean Genet,' said the Queen again, helpfully. 'Vous le connaissez?' 'Bien sûr,' said the president. 'Il m'intéresse,' said the Queen. 'Vraiment?' The president put down his spoon. It was going to be a long evening. It was the dogs' fault. They were snobs and ordinarily, having been in the garden, would have gone up the front steps, where a footman generally opened them the door. Today, though, for some reason they careered along the terrace, barking their heads off, and scampered down the steps again and round the end along the side of the house, where she could hear them yapping at something in one of the yards. It was the City of Westminster travelling library, a large removal-like van parked next to the bins outside one of the kitchen doors. This wasn't a part of the palace she saw much of, and she had certainly never seen the library parked there before, nor presumably had the dogs, hence the din, so having failed in her attempt to calm them down she went up the little steps of the van in order to apologise. The driver was sitting with his back to her, sticking a label on a book, the only seeming borrower a thin ginger-haired boy in white overalls crouched in the aisle reading. Neither of them took any notice of the new arrival, so she coughed and said, 'I'm sorry about this awful racket,' where-upon the driver got up so suddenly he banged his head on the Reference section and the boy in the aisle scrambled to his feet and upset Photography & Fashion. She put her head out of the door. 'Shut up this minute, you silly creatures,' which, as had been the move's intention, gave the driver/librarian time to compose himself and the boy to pick up the books. 'One has never seen you here before, Mr . . .' 'Hutchings, Your Majesty. Every Wednesday, ma'am.' 'Really? I never knew that. Have you come far?' 'Only from Westminster, ma'am.' 'And you are . . . ?' 'Norman, ma'am. Seakins.' 'And where do you work?' 'In the kitchens, ma'am.' 'Oh. Do you have much time for reading?' 'Not really, ma'am.' 'I'm the same. Though now that one is here I suppose one ought to borrow a book.' Mr Hutchings smiled helpfully. 'Is there anything you would recommend?' 'What does Your Majesty like?' The Queen hesitated, because to tell the truth she wasn't sure. She'd never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people. It was a hobby and it was in the nature of her job that she didn't have hobbies. Jogging, growing roses, chess or rock climbing, cake decoration, model aeroplanes. No. Hobbies involved preferences and preferences had to be avoided; pref- erences excluded people. One had no preferences. Her job was to take an interest, not to be interested herself. And besides, reading wasn't doing. She was a doer. So she gazed round the book-lined van and played for time. 'Is one allowed to borrow a book? One doesn't have a ticket?' 'No problem,' said Mr Hutchings. 'One is a pensioner,' said the Queen, not that she was sure that made any difference. 'Ma'am can borrow up to six books.' 'Six? Heavens!' Meanwhile the ginger-haired young man had made his choice and given his book to the librarian to stamp. Still playing for time, the Queen picked it up. 'What have you chosen, Mr Seakins?' expecting it to be, well, she wasn't sure what she expected, but it wasn't what it was. 'Oh. Cecil Beaton. Did you know him?' 'No, ma'am.' 'No, of course not. You'd be too young. He always used to be round here, snapping away. And a bit of a tartar. Stand here, stand there. Snap, snap. And there's a book about him now?' 'Several, ma'am.' 'Really? I suppose everyone gets written about sooner or later.' She riffled through it. 'There's probably a picture of me in it somewhere. Oh yes. That one. Of course, he wasn't just a photographer. He designed, too. Oklahoma!, things like that.' 'I think it was My Fair Lady, ma'am.' 'Oh, was it?' said the Queen, unused to being contradicted. 'Where did you say you worked?' She put the book back in the boy's big red hands. 'In the kitchens, ma'am.' She had still not solved her problem, knowing that if she left without a book it would seem to Mr Hutchings that the library was somehow lacking. Then on a shelf of rather worn-looking volumes she saw a name she remembered. 'Ivy Compton-Burnett! I can read that.' She took the book out and gave it to Mr Hutchings to stamp. 'What a treat!' she hugged it unconvincingly before opening it. 'Oh. The last time it was taken out was in 1989.' 'She's not a popular author, ma'am.' 'Why, I wonder? I made her a dame.' Mr Hutchings refrained from saying that this wasn't necessarily the road to the public's heart. The Queen looked at the photograph on the back of the jacket. 'Yes. I remember that hair, a roll like a pie-crust that went right round her head.' She smiled and Mr Hutchings knew that the visit was over. 'Goodbye.' He inclined his head as they had told him at the library to do should this eventuality ever arise, and the Queen went off in the direction of the garden with the dogs madly barking again, while Norman, bearing his Cecil Beaton, skirted a chef lounging outside by the bins having a cigarette and went back to the kitchens. Shutting up the van and driving away, Mr Hutchings reflected that a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett would take some reading. He had never got very far with her himself and thought, rightly, that borrowing the book had just been a polite gesture. Still, it was one that he appreciated and as more than a courtesy. The council was always threatening to cut back on the library, and the patronage of so distinguished a borrower (or customer, as the council preferred to call it) would do him no harm. 'We have a travelling library,' the Queen said to her husband that evening. 'Comes every Wednesday.' 'Jolly good. Wonders never cease.' 'You remember Oklahoma!?' 'Yes. We saw it when we were engaged.' Extraordinary to think of it, the dashing blond boy he had been. 'Was that Cecil Beaton?' 'No idea. Never liked the fellow. Green shoes.' 'Smelled delicious.' 'What's that?' 'A book. I borrowed it.' 'Dead, I suppose.' 'Who?' 'The Beaton fellow.' 'Oh yes. Everybody's dead.' 'Good show, though.' And he went off to bed glumly singing 'Oh, what a beautiful morning' as the Queen opened her book. Excerpted from The Uncommon Reader by Forelake Ltd. Copyright (c) 2007 by Forelake Ltd. Published in September 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. Excerpted from The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
