British writer Alan Bennett. Photo / Nigel Parry
Oh, to write like Alan Bennett. The consummate modulations of mood and structure. The utterly English urbanity and self-deprecation. The flawless eye and ear for demotic or aesthetic detail. If it weren't for the fact that his best bits are like reading sunlight, I could dislike the guy intensely.
Four
Stories (Look at the understatement. Look!) assembles a quartet of his novellas from the past quarter-century, proving in the process that elegance and accuracy don't age a bit.
His celebrations and anatomisings of suburban life begin with a memorial service where a whole red carpet of the famous arrive to honour their late masseur, a man who liked to work in his posing pouch, or - as many satisfied clients acknowledge - out of it. A "journey around Clive's body" initiates nobly anarchic disagreement and dispute among the congregation.
Then come the pair of drearily marrieds who get home to find their flat stripped of every object, plus the chronicle of Miss Shepherd (usual wardrobe: raincoat, orange skirt, golfing cap, carpet slippers), who for 15 years parked and lived in her van just across from the author's driveway.
And there's another terminal tale, where a teacher visits his father, who has inconsiderately decided to die during Meet The Parents Week. It swells into wondrous comedy, counterpointed in typical Bennett style by the poignancy of the solitary old man "not wanting to be any trouble".
