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Product Info
Publisher: Picador
Author: Alan Bennett
ISBN: 9781250907738
Year: 2022
Format: Paperback
Fiction, Humor
The Uncommon Reader
by
Alan Bennett
The Uncommon Reader by
Alan Bennett
Reviews
"Bennett's jokes are so beautifully modulated.... The Uncommon Reader is a piece of audacious lèse majesté which, in an earlier age, would have put its author's head on a spike.... Bennett knows what he is doing."
The Guardian
Summary
From one of England’s most celebrated writers, a funny and superbly observed novella about the Queen of England and the subversive power of reading
When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, she finds that her view of the world changes dramatically. Abetted in her newfound obsession by Norman, a young man from the royal kitchens, the Queen comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading initially alarms the palace staff and soon leads to surprising and very funny consequences for the country at large.
With the poignant and mischievous wit of The History Boys, England’s best-loved author Alan Bennett revels in the power of literature to change even the most uncommon reader’s life.
