The Clothes They Stood Up In and The Lady in the Van (Today Show Book Club #5)

From Alan Bennett, the author of The Madness of King George, come two stories about the strange nature of possessions...or the lack of them. In the nationally bestselling novel The Clothes They Stood Up In, the staid Ransomes return from the opera to find their Regent’s Park flat stripped bare--right down to the toilet-paper roll. Free of all their earthly belongings, the couple faces a perplexing question: Who are they without the things they’ve spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly a world of unlimited, frightening possibility opens up before them.

In “The Lady in the Van,” which The Village Voice called “one of the finest bursts of comic writing the twentieth century has produced,” Bennett recounts the strange life of Miss Shepherd, a London eccentric who parked her van (overstuffed with decades’ worth of old clothes, oozing batteries, and kitchen utensils still in their original packaging) in the author’s driveway for more than fifteen years. A mesmerizing portrait of an outsider with an acquisitive taste and an indomitable spirit, this biographical essay is drawn with equal parts fascination and compassion.

After reading "The Uncommon Reader",by Allan Bennet, I thought I would try some other books by the same author. While they were humorous to a point, they by no means held up the same way as "..Reader" did. I was very glad that both stories, "The Clothes They Stood Up In" and "The Lady in the Van" were extremely short!

I read this book AFTER I read Uncommon Reader and was disappointed with the short story/novella. But Bennett's essay Lady in the Van gave me pause and was well-worth the read. Bennett, a well-known playwright allows a homeless woman to park her van in his driveway for years. The essay (compiled from newspaper columns he wrote) is honest ... not saccharine at all.

For me, this little book with two tales - one fiction, one true - is odd, and not in a good way. Despite other reviews about these being tales of the material world, they actually seem more about sad women who've wasted most of their lives. Neither of the women is particularly admirable. Though at least the fiction one is more likable. All in all, given the characters, I didn't get the attempted "quirky British humor" the editorial reviews raved about. Perhaps it's because it seems like such dark humor, which I generally don't like.

"The Clothes..." tale is by far the better of the two. Mrs. Ransome, who isn't the sharpest tool in the toolbox, lives in a plodding-along world with a meaningless marriage to a condescending husband until all of their possessions are stolen in a strange burglary. Because there's a little more mystery to it, this one kept me engaged enough to want to read it to the end. But, it seemed it would make a better magazine article or play.

"The Lady..." is actually a compilation of excerpts from the author's diary about a mentally-unstable woman that lived in a van outside of the authors home for 20+ years. Again, just plain sad and odd.

The two tales are odd and sad enough to leave you thinking about them after you'er through. But it certainly wasn't what I was expecting when I purchased it - and I was dissappointed.

Finally, like others, I recommend you skip the introduction if you purchase it. It doesn't make sense until you read the stories, and it really should have been an afterword.

Alan Bennett's style is like eating a box of candy ... every page has a wonderful surprise. The story about the Lady in the Van was so compassionate, funny, and sad all at once. I loved both stories.

Alan Bennett is fantastic. The writing is funny and smart, and the characters stay in your head.