Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

BookBrowse Reviews The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

The Uncommon Reader

A Novella

by Alan Bennett
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • Sep 18, 2007, 128 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 2008, 128 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Reviews

BookBrowse:


A delightful celebration of books and writers, and the readers who sustain them

Author and actor Alan Bennett has a long list of credits to his name. The youngest generation might know him as the lugubrious voice of Winnie-The-Pooh and friends in the BBC audio recordings from the 1990s; the next generation up are likely to know him as the playwright of The Madness of George III, or the more recent The History Boys (which won six Tonys including Best Play); and the generation above may admit to being old enough to have seen him perform with Dudley Moore, Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller in Beyond The Fringe (see sidebar).

The Uncommon Reader is not an insiders look into the life of the person best known as the Queen of England but rather an opportunity for Bennett to play around with the caricature of the Queen, familiar to most of us from comedy sketches and news reels. If that is the case, one might ask what distinguishes The Uncommon Reader from any old late night comedy show? The answer is there's simply no comparison - Bennett is one of the great satirists of the English language and, now in his 70s, has honed his craft to perfection, developing a style uniquely his own. It is immaterial whether in real life the Queen is an avid reader or not (one is told she is not) - her perceived character is merely the foil through which Bennett can poke some heartfelt fun and take the reader on a Queen's-eye whistle-stop tour through the best and worst of English literature.

Whatever themes an eager reviewer might be able to extrapolate from The Uncommon Reader, the bottom line is that it's really about the laughs; but if themes are sought, they can be found loud and clear. There is Bennett's "savagely Swiftian indignation against stupidity, Philistinism and arrogance in public places [which offers] a passionate argument for the civilizing power of art" (The London Times). Also, through his humane picture of this royal icon, Bennett gently asks us to question why so many of us are in thrall to "royals" (and by extension, to anyone who inhabits a famous body), when they are, let's face it, just regular, flawed individuals, like the rest of us? All this in a compact, always entertaining 128 pages.

Rated by BookBrowse members as one of your top 4 books of last year, The Uncommon Reader, is an uncommonly good read.

A brief video interview with Alan Bennett about The History Boys.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in September 2007, and has been updated for the October 2008 edition. Click here to go to this issue.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Uncommon Reader, try these:

  • The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise jacket

    The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise

    by Julia Stuart

    Published 2011

    About This book

    More by this author

    Brimming with charm and whimsy, this exquisite novel set in the Tower of London has the transportive qualities and delightful magic of the contemporary classics Chocolat and Amélie.

  • Edward Trencom's Nose jacket

    Edward Trencom's Nose

    by Giles Milton

    Published 2008

    About This book

    More by this author

    On an ordinary day, Edward’s world is turned upside down when he stumbles across a crate of family papers. To his horror, he discovers that nine previous generations of his family have come to sticky ends because of their noses. When he investigates---despite his grandfather’s caveat never to look into the origin of his nose---Edward ...


More books by Alan Bennett
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Our Evenings
    Our Evenings
    by Alan Hollinghurst
    Alan Hollinghurst's novel Our Evenings is the fictional autobiography of Dave Win, a British ...
  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.