The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The blurb...

The Uncommon Reader" is none other than HM the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. She reads widely ( JR Ackerley, Jean Genet, Ivy Compton Burnett and the classics) and intelligently. 

Her reading naturally changes her world view and her relationship with people like the oleaginous prime minister and his repellent advisers. She comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with much that she has to do. In short, her reading is subversive. The consequence is, of course, surprising, mildly shocking and very funny.

My Review...

I only had time for a short book this week, So after checking through Goodreads I settled on this little 124 page dwtty piece of loveliness. It was first published in 2007 so I haven't exactly got my finger bang on the pulse of today with this one. 

I also chose it in part to challenge my own issues around the institution of the Monarchy. (Basically, I think it is ridiculous and would much rather my taxes go the NHS.)

Bennett portrays them as well meaning idiots stuck in their rut of opening supermarkets and launching ships.  They are like the "flying lady" ornament on the hood of a Rolls Royce. They are nice to look at, a distraction for the eye but in reality totally superfluous to the actual running of the machine, quite literally a figure head.

That is until her Madge stumbles into the mobile library parked around the back in the servants quarters and meets young, ginger and possibly gay Norman the kitchen boy. Madge takes out a book out of politeness and the floodgates open. 

This is where Bennett excels. He describes the addiction to books that every bibliophile knows only too well. He also describes its consequences, both to the reader and those around them. He may have been describing the Queen but he is also describing me and all those who frequent this site and Twitter page! Yes that means you. 

Gradually the royal robot develops consciousness. Yes it is very ex Machina.  So the plot isn't twisty (although there is quite a mic' drop moment at the end) and the book is very short. In fact it is more of a thought experiment than a novel.

 However it is very clever and well written. Mr Bennett does have a lovely turn of phrase as can be seen by the amount of selected quotes that I have used below. I also had to cut another half dozen off the list. 

In short this is a small, well crafted thing of beauty

Selected quotes...

"Read? Of course he read. Everybody read. He opened the glove compartment and took out his copy of the Sun."

"Surely most people can read?’ ‘They can read, ma’am, but I’m not sure that they do.’

"it would help if we were able to put out a press release saying that, apart from English literature, Your Majesty was also reading ethnic classics.’ ‘Which ethnic classics did you have in mind, Sir Kevin? The Kama Sutra?’

"To read is to withdraw. To make oneself unavailable."

"Nor initially did she discuss her reading with anyone, least of all in public, knowing that such a late-flowering enthusiasm, however worthwhile, might expose her to ridicule. It would be the same, she thought, if she had developed a passion for God, or dahlias."

"Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met with in the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them."

"The public must not be allowed to think the world could not be managed. That way lay chaos. Or defeat at the polls, which was the same thing.

"Books are wonderful, aren’t they?’ she said to the vice-chancellor, who concurred. ‘At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak,’ she said, ‘they tenderise one.’ 

"One has given one’s white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood and conversed politely with men who have personally slaughtered children. One has waded through excrement and gore; to be Queen, I have often thought the one essential item of equipment a pair of thigh-length boots."

About the Author...

Alan Bennett is one of the most celebrated writers in Britain today. His play (and film) The History Boys won seven Emmys in New York and was the most successful play in the history of the National Theatre. Untold Stories has sold over 700,000 copies in hardback and paperback. Alan Bennett was Author of the Year at the 2006 British Book Awards.