SMUT
One of England’s finest and most loved writers explores the uncomfortable
and tragicomic gap between people’s public appearance and their private
desires in two tender and surprising stories.
In The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson, a
recently bereaved widow finds interesting ways to supplement her income
by performing as a patient for medical students, and renting out her
spare room. Quiet, middle-class, and middle-aged, Mrs. Donaldson will
soon discover that she rather enjoys role-play at the hospital, and the
irregular and startling entertainment provided by her tenants.
In The Shielding of Mrs.
One of England’s finest and most loved writers explores the uncomfortable
and tragicomic gap between people’s public appearance and their private
desires in two tender and surprising stories.
In The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson, a
recently bereaved widow finds interesting ways to supplement her income
by performing as a patient for medical students, and renting out her
spare room. Quiet, middle-class, and middle-aged, Mrs. Donaldson will
soon discover that she rather enjoys role-play at the hospital, and the
irregular and startling entertainment provided by her tenants.
In The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes, a
disappointed middle-aged mother dotes on her only son, Graham, who
believes he must shield her from the truth. As Graham’s double life
becomes increasingly complicated, we realize how little he understands,
not only of his own desires but also those of his mother.
A
master storyteller dissects a very English form of secrecy with two
stories of the unexpected in otherwise apparently ordinary lives.
- Picador
- Paperback
- January 2012
- 160 Pages
- 9781250003164
Buy the Book
$14.00
About Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett has
been one of England’s leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe. The History Boys won six
Tony Awards; his most recent play is The Habit of Art.
Praise
“Artfully entertaining…On one particular subject Bennett is incomparably
brilliant: role-playing, which is the meat of both stories.”—Simon
Schama, Financial Times (London)
“Bennett’s humor consistently resides in the logic of the parenthetical
aside, the comedy of the false appearances or misperceptions being
challenged or disabused.…Mrs. Donaldson is not as unconventional as she
thought herself, and no one around Mr. Forbes is where—or who—they
pretend to be.”—The Guardian (London)
“Tender and comic…This is Bennett’s world, where repression is never far
from the sexual act….Good, old-fashioned British humor with the
lightest of subversive twists.”—The Independent (London)