Author:
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Inc
Published: Nov 2002
Genre: Fiction - General
Retail Price: $16.00
Pages: 224
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.
With the publication of her first novel, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its...
Somewhere,' muses Noah Calhoun, while sitting on his porch in the moonight, 'there were people making love.' The Notebook, a Southern-fried story of...
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals...
Precious Ramotswe lives to help people, a predilection that directs her to embark on a career as a private detective. It proves to be a remarkably...
Luanne Rice is a rarity among novelists today; she's a true storyteller. Her unique ability to weave together the bonds of love and family with the...
Canadian writer Mary Lawson's debut novel is a beautifully crafted and shimmering tale of love, death, and redemption. The story, narrated by ...
Sylvie Porter, dutiful daughter of Margaret, returns to her rural Rhode Island home town to nurse her aging mother. Meanwhile, wayward sister Jane...
A teenage boy named Michael is befriended by Hanna, a mysterious older married woman. Years later as a law student, he attends a criminal trial in...
I need more...substance. I liked the twists in the Clothes, but overall, just not my kind of book. Couldn't get into Lady in the Van at all.