'The Old Wives Tale' is up there with the best , 02 Jul 2008
Arnold Bennett's 'The Old Wives Tale' is well worth the read. Bennett was just as famous as the likes of JK Rowling in his time, even more famous than Viriginia Wolfe. This book is a classic, it is set in the Potteries and tells the tale of two sisters Constance and Sophia growing up in Victorian England.
I do not want to give too much away about the story, but Bennett's understanding of these two totally different characters is what makes this book one of the greats.

A complex, grim book, 08 Nov 2007
This is a curious hybrid, Victorian in subject and yet written in a modernist style, approaching at times the work of D. H. Lawrence. Bennett sets his work in the potteries of the black country, but the content and style can be compared to Lawrence's works, Women in Love and the Rainbow, although not quite as anarchic. In length and morals, this does fit the image of the Victorian triple decker quite neatly. It is not always an easy read, and the subject matter is grim, with much death and tragedy to speed the reader on. It concerns the lives and histories of two sisters, and follows their lives, as one becomes a respectable merchant's wife, and one runs away with a rake and pays for her life of sin. The story is unevenly balanced much of the time, sticking with the respectable sister, Constance, where I found the story of Sophia, the sinner, much more interesting. I believe this is one of Bennett's more inaccessible books, and although I didn't enjoy it overmuch, there were flashes of greatness which would encourage me to read one of this other works before I make a final judgement.

'The Old Wives Tale' is up there with the best , 02 Jul 2008
Arnold Bennett's 'The Old Wives Tale' is well worth the read. Bennett was just as famous as the likes of JK Rowling in his time, even more famous than Viriginia Wolfe. This book is a classic, it is set in the Potteries and tells the tale of two sisters Constance and Sophia growing up in Victorian England.
I do not want to give too much away about the story, but Bennett's understanding of these two totally different characters is what makes this book one of the greats.

A complex, grim book, 08 Nov 2007
This is a curious hybrid, Victorian in subject and yet written in a modernist style, approaching at times the work of D. H. Lawrence. Bennett sets his work in the potteries of the black country, but the content and style can be compared to Lawrence's works, Women in Love and the Rainbow, although not quite as anarchic. In length and morals, this does fit the image of the Victorian triple decker quite neatly. It is not always an easy read, and the subject matter is grim, with much death and tragedy to speed the reader on. It concerns the lives and histories of two sisters, and follows their lives, as one becomes a respectable merchant's wife, and one runs away with a rake and pays for her life of sin. The story is unevenly balanced much of the time, sticking with the respectable sister, Constance, where I found the story of Sophia, the sinner, much more interesting. I believe this is one of Bennett's more inaccessible books, and although I didn't enjoy it overmuch, there were flashes of greatness which would encourage me to read one of this other works before I make a final judgement.

Dull and Dry but Addictive, 13 Aug 2008
Anna Of The Five Towns is often dull, but the emotional arc makes it compulsive reading. Unfortunately this doesn't pay off, as the ending feels empty.

Anna and her sister Agnes live under the strict rule of their cold-hearted and miserly father. On Anna's birthday she comes into her fortune, but remains controlled by her father. One of the properties she owns is a works run by Titus Price and his son Willie, and Anna watches, morally pained, as her father rightfully but cruelly extracts money from these men. Meanwhile, Anna is courted by Henry Mynors, makes friends with the cream of society Suttons, and seeks a stronger faith in God.

Bennett's descriptions are excellent, a skill I find lacking in most authors, but he struggles with plot and character. Sometimes the detail is so heavy that it slips into present tense, and has nothing to do with the characters at all. Characters will often have long dull conversations about money, duty or tea, and while I believe the characters would be discussing this if they were real, it isn't relevant in the fiction.

In Frank Swinnerton's introduction to the novel, he says, `Bennett admitted that at first he had difficulty in gaining even `a dim vision' of some of the characters.' At first? This is clearly still at fault. Bennett's dry and emotionless style swamps the characters, who never become much more than names. They never reveal other layers that I assumed must be lurking and were going to go somewhere in the conclusion. No characters feel or sound real, or have convincing emotions. They are all wrapped in cotton wool, disconnected from the world. Bennett often states character personalities through flashback and statements, but doesn't show them, so these can be hard to believe. Beatrice Sutton appears to be the comedy character, and only exists as this device, almost as if Bennett was told he needed to add some comedy.

Swinnerton writes that `The strength...of Anna of the Five Towns lies in its sincerity and freedom from pretentiousness.' I don't see this as strength. Sincerity and freedom from pretentiousness can be used to describe children, and are hardly praiseworthy attributes in an adult's piece of fiction. Bennett's writing style is very dry and failed to interest or grip me. What kept me reading was the horrific curiosity to discover what was the approaching tragedy continually hinted at.

Bennett refers to Anna Of The Five Towns as `a sermon against parental tyranny', and much of the book is indeed focused on this theme. However, the blurb gives away what is really important, which spoils the story as this doesn't become apparent until the penultimate page (and is a bit late). With hindsight, I can see that the hints and plot developments were heading for the conclusion, but while I was reading it this was not apparent, and other plot strands that are not tied up seemed far more important. Developments that lead to the conclusion are constantly hinted at and yet never truly exist in the story. So the ending, when it turns out what the oft-mentioned inevitable tragedy is, didn't bother me. What about the important themes of the book? While the ending-relevant stuff is subtle, and subtlety is good, Anna Of The Five Towns doesn't satisfy, because it ends on only that and ignores everything else. Looking back, everything else now feels like a waste of my time, meaning I have no desire to read it again.

This edition comes with a mildly interesting introduction by Frank Swinnerton, written in 1953. It doesn't really seem to have a point, but it enlightened me on a few things, as I knew nothing of Bennett before I read it. As for the cover illustration of five girls skipping in a circle near some factories, well it doesn't really conjure the book and its potato-print style actually made me assume the book was boring, if you go by judging books by their covers, which is the whole point of covers. And it was quite boring.

Real life 100 years ago, 07 Jun 2007
Like other reviewers, I didn't expect that much from this book. I only bought it because Bennett's work was praised in BBC4's Edwardian series. I found it truly absorbing. The ending lingers with me and I'll remember the characters for a long time. It's the first Arnold Bennett book I've read and I'll definitely search out some more of his work.

A "modern" victorian novel, 02 Sep 2006
I enjoyed this book more than I expected. It is an intelligent, well drawn debate of the role of women in society, duty and, centrally, the conflict between morality and capitalism which is almost as relevant now as in the industrial revolution when it was written. Unfortunately, some of the characters are not particularly well described. Henry Myors is an example of this, but this is relatively unimportant as he is there merely as a symbol of the attractive, successful businessman. However, the characterisation of Willie Price is similarly unsuccessful and this is more important, considering his central role in the novel. In general, however this is a well realised tragedy - Anna's involvement in the "valid" persecution of those who owe her money ultimately leads to the destruction of her happiness.

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS, 01 Nov 2005
If you like Arnold Bennett and his wonderful descriptions of life in the Victorian era and the grim images of the potteries then you will like this. So far as Iam concerned Clayhanger is his masterpiece but most of his stuff is a good read although I couldn't get into the Old Wive's Tales

Bread and butter, 26 Apr 1999
A truly great read, much better than I'd been lead to believe from having read Bennett's Grand Babylon Hotel. In this one, a miserly, extremely nasty, insulting, but well-off grouch of a father is raising two daughters under extraordinarily miserable conditions in a small, dull and pious industrial town. Everybody seems to eat nothing but bread and butter and go to church. Anna is the older of the two and she and her father are very well drawn characters. There's a two-week vacation on the Isle of Man and it's all in all a great read. I feel as if I've been listening in on the lives of my grandparents and great-grandparents a hundred years ago or so. Bennett is a subtle and compelling writer with a highly readable style. You can zip right through this book.

Interesting Quote: "All knew of the calamity and had received from it a new interest in life."

'The Old Wives Tale' is up there with the best , 02 Jul 2008
Arnold Bennett's 'The Old Wives Tale' is well worth the read. Bennett was just as famous as the likes of JK Rowling in his time, even more famous than Viriginia Wolfe. This book is a classic, it is set in the Potteries and tells the tale of two sisters Constance and Sophia growing up in Victorian England.
I do not want to give too much away about the story, but Bennett's understanding of these two totally different characters is what makes this book one of the greats.

A complex, grim book, 08 Nov 2007
This is a curious hybrid, Victorian in subject and yet written in a modernist style, approaching at times the work of D. H. Lawrence. Bennett sets his work in the potteries of the black country, but the content and style can be compared to Lawrence's works, Women in Love and the Rainbow, although not quite as anarchic. In length and morals, this does fit the image of the Victorian triple decker quite neatly. It is not always an easy read, and the subject matter is grim, with much death and tragedy to speed the reader on. It concerns the lives and histories of two sisters, and follows their lives, as one becomes a respectable merchant's wife, and one runs away with a rake and pays for her life of sin. The story is unevenly balanced much of the time, sticking with the respectable sister, Constance, where I found the story of Sophia, the sinner, much more interesting. I believe this is one of Bennett's more inaccessible books, and although I didn't enjoy it overmuch, there were flashes of greatness which would encourage me to read one of this other works before I make a final judgement.

Dull and Dry but Addictive, 13 Aug 2008
Anna Of The Five Towns is often dull, but the emotional arc makes it compulsive reading. Unfortunately this doesn't pay off, as the ending feels empty.

Anna and her sister Agnes live under the strict rule of their cold-hearted and miserly father. On Anna's birthday she comes into her fortune, but remains controlled by her father. One of the properties she owns is a works run by Titus Price and his son Willie, and Anna watches, morally pained, as her father rightfully but cruelly extracts money from these men. Meanwhile, Anna is courted by Henry Mynors, makes friends with the cream of society Suttons, and seeks a stronger faith in God.

Bennett's descriptions are excellent, a skill I find lacking in most authors, but he struggles with plot and character. Sometimes the detail is so heavy that it slips into present tense, and has nothing to do with the characters at all. Characters will often have long dull conversations about money, duty or tea, and while I believe the characters would be discussing this if they were real, it isn't relevant in the fiction.

In Frank Swinnerton's introduction to the novel, he says, `Bennett admitted that at first he had difficulty in gaining even `a dim vision' of some of the characters.' At first? This is clearly still at fault. Bennett's dry and emotionless style swamps the characters, who never become much more than names. They never reveal other layers that I assumed must be lurking and were going to go somewhere in the conclusion. No characters feel or sound real, or have convincing emotions. They are all wrapped in cotton wool, disconnected from the world. Bennett often states character personalities through flashback and statements, but doesn't show them, so these can be hard to believe. Beatrice Sutton appears to be the comedy character, and only exists as this device, almost as if Bennett was told he needed to add some comedy.

Swinnerton writes that `The strength...of Anna of the Five Towns lies in its sincerity and freedom from pretentiousness.' I don't see this as strength. Sincerity and freedom from pretentiousness can be used to describe children, and are hardly praiseworthy attributes in an adult's piece of fiction. Bennett's writing style is very dry and failed to interest or grip me. What kept me reading was the horrific curiosity to discover what was the approaching tragedy continually hinted at.

Bennett refers to Anna Of The Five Towns as `a sermon against parental tyranny', and much of the book is indeed focused on this theme. However, the blurb gives away what is really important, which spoils the story as this doesn't become apparent until the penultimate page (and is a bit late). With hindsight, I can see that the hints and plot developments were heading for the conclusion, but while I was reading it this was not apparent, and other plot strands that are not tied up seemed far more important. Developments that lead to the conclusion are constantly hinted at and yet never truly exist in the story. So the ending, when it turns out what the oft-mentioned inevitable tragedy is, didn't bother me. What about the important themes of the book? While the ending-relevant stuff is subtle, and subtlety is good, Anna Of The Five Towns doesn't satisfy, because it ends on only that and ignores everything else. Looking back, everything else now feels like a waste of my time, meaning I have no desire to read it again.

This edition comes with a mildly interesting introduction by Frank Swinnerton, written in 1953. It doesn't really seem to have a point, but it enlightened me on a few things, as I knew nothing of Bennett before I read it. As for the cover illustration of five girls skipping in a circle near some factories, well it doesn't really conjure the book and its potato-print style actually made me assume the book was boring, if you go by judging books by their covers, which is the whole point of covers. And it was quite boring.

Real life 100 years ago, 07 Jun 2007
Like other reviewers, I didn't expect that much from this book. I only bought it because Bennett's work was praised in BBC4's Edwardian series. I found it truly absorbing. The ending lingers with me and I'll remember the characters for a long time. It's the first Arnold Bennett book I've read and I'll definitely search out some more of his work.

A "modern" victorian novel, 02 Sep 2006
I enjoyed this book more than I expected. It is an intelligent, well drawn debate of the role of women in society, duty and, centrally, the conflict between morality and capitalism which is almost as relevant now as in the industrial revolution when it was written. Unfortunately, some of the characters are not particularly well described. Henry Myors is an example of this, but this is relatively unimportant as he is there merely as a symbol of the attractive, successful businessman. However, the characterisation of Willie Price is similarly unsuccessful and this is more important, considering his central role in the novel. In general, however this is a well realised tragedy - Anna's involvement in the "valid" persecution of those who owe her money ultimately leads to the destruction of her happiness.

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS, 01 Nov 2005
If you like Arnold Bennett and his wonderful descriptions of life in the Victorian era and the grim images of the potteries then you will like this. So far as Iam concerned Clayhanger is his masterpiece but most of his stuff is a good read although I couldn't get into the Old Wive's Tales

Bread and butter, 26 Apr 1999
A truly great read, much better than I'd been lead to believe from having read Bennett's Grand Babylon Hotel. In this one, a miserly, extremely nasty, insulting, but well-off grouch of a father is raising two daughters under extraordinarily miserable conditions in a small, dull and pious industrial town. Everybody seems to eat nothing but bread and butter and go to church. Anna is the older of the two and she and her father are very well drawn characters. There's a two-week vacation on the Isle of Man and it's all in all a great read. I feel as if I've been listening in on the lives of my grandparents and great-grandparents a hundred years ago or so. Bennett is a subtle and compelling writer with a highly readable style. You can zip right through this book.

Interesting Quote: "All knew of the calamity and had received from it a new interest in life."

why is this author forgotten, 13 Sep 2006
I discovered Arnold Bennett almost by accident when clearing a house after the death of a much loved relative. Why is this author forgotten and relegated to the 'reserve stock' in my local library? The book is a masterpiece of social history. The descriptions of life in the potteries at the turn of the century evoke a time and place so distant and yet so real at the same time. His observations of human interactions, relationships and foibles are as relevant today as they were almost a century ago . He is a master of the English language and must not be forgotten. Why are his novels not in the libraries and bookshops the length and breadth of the country?

Forget Modern Day Fiction...., 03 Mar 2006
I have just read an old, battered copy of this novel, with its pages coming adrift and its hardback cover yellowed with age but it has been one of the best reads I've had in years. Bennett's enveloping saga of 2 very different sisters from young adulthood to old age and death is so skillfully and powerfully written that, at times, it took my breath away. I tried to get a copy of The Old Wive's Tale from my local library, having just enjoyed Bennett's Anna of the Five Towns. When I asked for the author by name the librarian smirked and said she didn't think he was very popular any more. (It was almost a case of Arnold WHO?) It's a crime! I find Bennett's writing in this novel as fresh and relevant to today's human condition as any of our present day writers. Please read this novel, you will be glad you did!!

wise, worldly and nicely understated., 26 Jul 2004
I confess that the first time I tried to read this it defeated me, I found it simply too slow-moving, but a few months on I decided to give it another go and was very pleasently surprised. It is the life-story of two sisters, Constance and Sophia, daughters of a small-town draper. Constance is steady and reliable, she marries one of the assistants in the shop and they take over the business when her father dies. Her life is relatively uneventful, work punctuated by the birth of her beloved only child, (with whom she is absolutely besotted), and the untimely death of her husband. Sophia by contrast elopes with a travelling salesman, and runs away with him to Paris, where he proceeds to squander his fortune and then finally abandons her. Sophia though has the commonsense of her upbringing to fall back on, and manages to rise above all this.

Much has been written about the influence of the 19th century French realist writers on Bennett in this book, but I found him better. Zola's pessimistic view of life I find too exasperating at times. In this book Sophia develops realistically from a dreamy irresponsible schoolgirl into a young woman with a robust attitude to the world. Nowhere is this done better than the chapters where she falls ill with a fever and is taken in by a middle-aged courtesan. When the courtesan is left abandoned by her last lover, Sophia is shocked by the way the lady has humiliated herself trying to hang onto him. Why didn't she simply put aside some of her vast earnings from her heyday for when this was bound to happen? Here we have the shop-keeper's daughter in all her tremendous commonsense glory. Her feckless husband is also well-drawn and very believable. He's not wicked, just simply devoid of any kind of sense or responsibility.

Most fascinating for me though was Bennett's immaculate reconstruction of 19th-century small-town English life, and the day-to-day lives of the people living in St Luke's Square. Nowhere does he do this better than Constance's husband being quietly overwhelmed with emotion when he learns he's at long last to be a dad, and the townsfolk's dignified protest when one of their own is hanged for accidentally killing his alcoholic wife. I haven't yet read any of Bennett's other books, but I find it hard to believe they come much better than this.

Subtle, humane, ironic, 05 Mar 2003
While Bennett is always readable and usually very enjoyable, this book is probably his masterpiece. It tells the story of two sisters from the Five Towns whose lives take very different turns and who, after many years, are restored to one another.
Constance remains in the family business and while strong and determined, maintains the outlook of a provincial matron, facing the ups and downs, economic and social, of life running a large drapery shop. Sophia runs off to Paris with a cad, soon gets his measure and then decides to make her own life running an upmarket boarding house. While neither woman's life can be said to be happy or especially fulfilled, the reconciliation of the two sisters is moving and believable (it made me cry, anyway!) and their last years described with a gentle, sardonic humour which adds a different dimension to that of most of the French realists Bennett admired. This is an outstanding novel and in my view should be on the reading list of everyone who wants to think of themselves as a well-read person!

Lovely; slowly builds up in detail to grip you, 27 Jun 2001
A fantastic book.

Very slowly, very exactly it builds up the story of the lives of two sisters through the 19th century. From birth & childhood in a small town, through there events of their lives, you get a wonderfully rich picture of them, their charachters & the surrounding life.

The jacket describes this as ".. one of the most succesful attempts - if not the most succesful - to rival the French realistic novel". That is truye as gar as it goes, but it misses the fact that I found this significantly more compelling, more interesting & richer than any of the French realist novels I've read lately. But perhaps that's because I'm English and the history resonates...?

A friend recommended this, and I admit, rather to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It is long, and it does take a while to get into it, but it is worth taking the time.

'The Old Wives Tale' is up there with the best , 02 Jul 2008
Arnold Bennett's 'The Old Wives Tale' is well worth the read. Bennett was just as famous as the likes of JK Rowling in his time, even more famous than Viriginia Wolfe. This book is a classic, it is set in the Potteries and tells the tale of two sisters Constance and Sophia growing up in Victorian England.
I do not want to give too much away about the story, but Bennett's understanding of these two totally different characters is what makes this book one of the greats.

A complex, grim book, 08 Nov 2007
This is a curious hybrid, Victorian in subject and yet written in a modernist style, approaching at times the work of D. H. Lawrence. Bennett sets his work in the potteries of the black country, but the content and style can be compared to Lawrence's works, Women in Love and the Rainbow, although not quite as anarchic. In length and morals, this does fit the image of the Victorian triple decker quite neatly. It is not always an easy read, and the subject matter is grim, with much death and tragedy to speed the reader on. It concerns the lives and histories of two sisters, and follows their lives, as one becomes a respectable merchant's wife, and one runs away with a rake and pays for her life of sin. The story is unevenly balanced much of the time, sticking with the respectable sister, Constance, where I found the story of Sophia, the sinner, much more interesting. I believe this is one of Bennett's more inaccessible books, and although I didn't enjoy it overmuch, there were flashes of greatness which would encourage me to read one of this other works before I make a final judgement.

Dull and Dry but Addictive, 13 Aug 2008
Anna Of The Five Towns is often dull, but the emotional arc makes it compulsive reading. Unfortunately this doesn't pay off, as the ending feels empty.

Anna and her sister Agnes live under the strict rule of their cold-hearted and miserly father. On Anna's birthday she comes into her fortune, but remains controlled by her father. One of the properties she owns is a works run by Titus Price and his son Willie, and Anna watches, morally pained, as her father rightfully but cruelly extracts money from these men. Meanwhile, Anna is courted by Henry Mynors, makes friends with the cream of society Suttons, and seeks a stronger faith in God.

Bennett's descriptions are excellent, a skill I find lacking in most authors, but he struggles with plot and character. Sometimes the detail is so heavy that it slips into present tense, and has nothing to do with the characters at all. Characters will often have long dull conversations about money, duty or tea, and while I believe the characters would be discussing this if they were real, it isn't relevant in the fiction.

In Frank Swinnerton's introduction to the novel, he says, `Bennett admitted that at first he had difficulty in gaining even `a dim vision' of some of the characters.' At first? This is clearly still at fault. Bennett's dry and emotionless style swamps the characters, who never become much more than names. They never reveal other layers that I assumed must be lurking and were going to go somewhere in the conclusion. No characters feel or sound real, or have convincing emotions. They are all wrapped in cotton wool, disconnected from the world. Bennett often states character personalities through flashback and statements, but doesn't show them, so these can be hard to believe. Beatrice Sutton appears to be the comedy character, and only exists as this device, almost as if Bennett was told he needed to add some comedy.

Swinnerton writes that `The strength...of Anna of the Five Towns lies in its sincerity and freedom from pretentiousness.' I don't see this as strength. Sincerity and freedom from pretentiousness can be used to describe children, and are hardly praiseworthy attributes in an adult's piece of fiction. Bennett's writing style is very dry and failed to interest or grip me. What kept me reading was the horrific curiosity to discover what was the approaching tragedy continually hinted at.

Bennett refers to Anna Of The Five Towns as `a sermon against parental tyranny', and much of the book is indeed focused on this theme. However, the blurb gives away what is really important, which spoils the story as this doesn't become apparent until the penultimate page (and is a bit late). With hindsight, I can see that the hints and plot developments were heading for the conclusion, but while I was reading it this was not apparent, and other plot strands that are not tied up seemed far more important. Developments that lead to the conclusion are constantly hinted at and yet never truly exist in the story. So the ending, when it turns out what the oft-mentioned inevitable tragedy is, didn't bother me. What about the important themes of the book? While the ending-relevant stuff is subtle, and subtlety is good, Anna Of The Five Towns doesn't satisfy, because it ends on only that and ignores everything else. Looking back, everything else now feels like a waste of my time, meaning I have no desire to read it again.

This edition comes with a mildly interesting introduction by Frank Swinnerton, written in 1953. It doesn't really seem to have a point, but it enlightened me on a few things, as I knew nothing of Bennett before I read it. As for the cover illustration of five girls skipping in a circle near some factories, well it doesn't really conjure the book and its potato-print style actually made me assume the book was boring, if you go by judging books by their covers, which is the whole point of covers. And it was quite boring.

Real life 100 years ago, 07 Jun 2007
Like other reviewers, I didn't expect that much from this book. I only bought it because Bennett's work was praised in BBC4's Edwardian series. I found it truly absorbing. The ending lingers with me and I'll remember the characters for a long time. It's the first Arnold Bennett book I've read and I'll definitely search out some more of his work.

A "modern" victorian novel, 02 Sep 2006
I enjoyed this book more than I expected. It is an intelligent, well drawn debate of the role of women in society, duty and, centrally, the conflict between morality and capitalism which is almost as relevant now as in the industrial revolution when it was written. Unfortunately, some of the characters are not particularly well described. Henry Myors is an example of this, but this is relatively unimportant as he is there merely as a symbol of the attractive, successful businessman. However, the characterisation of Willie Price is similarly unsuccessful and this is more important, considering his central role in the novel. In general, however this is a well realised tragedy - Anna's involvement in the "valid" persecution of those who owe her money ultimately leads to the destruction of her happiness.

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS, 01 Nov 2005
If you like Arnold Bennett and his wonderful descriptions of life in the Victorian era and the grim images of the potteries then you will like this. So far as Iam concerned Clayhanger is his masterpiece but most of his stuff is a good read although I couldn't get into the Old Wive's Tales

Bread and butter, 26 Apr 1999
A truly great read, much better than I'd been lead to believe from having read Bennett's Grand Babylon Hotel. In this one, a miserly, extremely nasty, insulting, but well-off grouch of a father is raising two daughters under extraordinarily miserable conditions in a small, dull and pious industrial town. Everybody seems to eat nothing but bread and butter and go to church. Anna is the older of the two and she and her father are very well drawn characters. There's a two-week vacation on the Isle of Man and it's all in all a great read. I feel as if I've been listening in on the lives of my grandparents and great-grandparents a hundred years ago or so. Bennett is a subtle and compelling writer with a highly readable style. You can zip right through this book.

Interesting Quote: "All knew of the calamity and had received from it a new interest in life."

why is this author forgotten, 13 Sep 2006
I discovered Arnold Bennett almost by accident when clearing a house after the death of a much loved relative. Why is this author forgotten and relegated to the 'reserve stock' in my local library? The book is a masterpiece of social history. The descriptions of life in the potteries at the turn of the century evoke a time and place so distant and yet so real at the same time. His observations of human interactions, relationships and foibles are as relevant today as they were almost a century ago . He is a master of the English language and must not be forgotten. Why are his novels not in the libraries and bookshops the length and breadth of the country?

Forget Modern Day Fiction...., 03 Mar 2006
I have just read an old, battered copy of this novel, with its pages coming adrift and its hardback cover yellowed with age but it has been one of the best reads I've had in years. Bennett's enveloping saga of 2 very different sisters from young adulthood to old age and death is so skillfully and powerfully written that, at times, it took my breath away. I tried to get a copy of The Old Wive's Tale from my local library, having just enjoyed Bennett's Anna of the Five Towns. When I asked for the author by name the librarian smirked and said she didn't think he was very popular any more. (It was almost a case of Arnold WHO?) It's a crime! I find Bennett's writing in this novel as fresh and relevant to today's human condition as any of our present day writers. Please read this novel, you will be glad you did!!

wise, worldly and nicely understated., 26 Jul 2004
I confess that the first time I tried to read this it defeated me, I found it simply too slow-moving, but a few months on I decided to give it another go and was very pleasently surprised. It is the life-story of two sisters, Constance and Sophia, daughters of a small-town draper. Constance is steady and reliable, she marries one of the assistants in the shop and they take over the business when her father dies. Her life is relatively uneventful, work punctuated by the birth of her beloved only child, (with whom she is absolutely besotted), and the untimely death of her husband. Sophia by contrast elopes with a travelling salesman, and runs away with him to Paris, where he proceeds to squander his fortune and then finally abandons her. Sophia though has the commonsense of her upbringing to fall back on, and manages to rise above all this.

Much has been written about the influence of the 19th century French realist writers on Bennett in this book, but I found him better. Zola's pessimistic view of life I find too exasperating at times. In this book Sophia develops realistically from a dreamy irresponsible schoolgirl into a young woman with a robust attitude to the world. Nowhere is this done better than the chapters where she falls ill with a fever and is taken in by a middle-aged courtesan. When the courtesan is left abandoned by her last lover, Sophia is shocked by the way the lady has humiliated herself trying to hang onto him. Why didn't she simply put aside some of her vast earnings from her heyday for when this was bound to happen? Here we have the shop-keeper's daughter in all her tremendous commonsense glory. Her feckless husband is also well-drawn and very believable. He's not wicked, just simply devoid of any kind of sense or responsibility.

Most fascinating for me though was Bennett's immaculate reconstruction of 19th-century small-town English life, and the day-to-day lives of the people living in St Luke's Square. Nowhere does he do this better than Constance's husband being quietly overwhelmed with emotion when he learns he's at long last to be a dad, and the townsfolk's dignified protest when one of their own is hanged for accidentally killing his alcoholic wife. I haven't yet read any of Bennett's other books, but I find it hard to believe they come much better than this.

Subtle, humane, ironic, 05 Mar 2003
While Bennett is always readable and usually very enjoyable, this book is probably his masterpiece. It tells the story of two sisters from the Five Towns whose lives take very different turns and who, after many years, are restored to one another.
Constance remains in the family business and while strong and determined, maintains the outlook of a provincial matron, facing the ups and downs, economic and social, of life running a large drapery shop. Sophia runs off to Paris with a cad, soon gets his measure and then decides to make her own life running an upmarket boarding house. While neither woman's life can be said to be happy or especially fulfilled, the reconciliation of the two sisters is moving and believable (it made me cry, anyway!) and their last years described with a gentle, sardonic humour which adds a different dimension to that of most of the French realists Bennett admired. This is an outstanding novel and in my view should be on the reading list of everyone who wants to think of themselves as a well-read person!

Lovely; slowly builds up in detail to grip you, 27 Jun 2001
A fantastic book.

Very slowly, very exactly it builds up the story of the lives of two sisters through the 19th century. From birth & childhood in a small town, through there events of their lives, you get a wonderfully rich picture of them, their charachters & the surrounding life.

The jacket describes this as ".. one of the most succesful attempts - if not the most succesful - to rival the French realistic novel". That is truye as gar as it goes, but it misses the fact that I found this significantly more compelling, more interesting & richer than any of the French realist novels I've read lately. But perhaps that's because I'm English and the history resonates...?

A friend recommended this, and I admit, rather to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It is long, and it does take a while to get into it, but it is worth taking the time.

From the back cover of the book...., 20 Aug 2006
"In HILDA LESSWAYS (the second volume of the trilogy that begins with CLAYHANGER and ends with THESE TWAIN) Bennett relates the early life of Hilda Lessways, before her marriage to Edwin Clayhanger. Her involvement with the enigmatic, self-made man, George Cannon, and his enterprises takes her from the offices of an embryo newspaper in the Five Towns to a venture into the guesthouse business in Brighton."

"As in CLAYHANGER Bennett, in Walter Allen's words, `follows the grain of life'. Hilda, in her guilt at having failed her mother, in her relationship with Cannon, in her growing fascination for young Clayhanger, in the reality of her hopes and tragedies, is one of Bennett's most living heroines."

'The Old Wives Tale' is up there with the best , 02 Jul 2008
Arnold Bennett's 'The Old Wives Tale' is well worth the read. Bennett was just as famous as the likes of JK Rowling in his time, even more famous than Viriginia Wolfe. This book is a classic, it is set in the Potteries and tells the tale of two sisters Constance and Sophia growing up in Victorian England.
I do not want to give too much away about the story, but Bennett's understanding of these two totally different characters is what makes this book one of the greats.

A complex, grim book, 08 Nov 2007
This is a curious hybrid, Victorian in subject and yet written in a modernist style, approaching at times the work of D. H. Lawrence. Bennett sets his work in the potteries of the black country, but the content and style can be compared to Lawrence's works, Women in Love and the Rainbow, although not quite as anarchic. In length and morals, this does fit the image of the Victorian triple decker quite neatly. It is not always an easy read, and the subject matter is grim, with much death and tragedy to speed the reader on. It concerns the lives and histories of two sisters, and follows their lives, as one becomes a respectable merchant's wife, and one runs away with a rake and pays for her life of sin. The story is unevenly balanced much of the time, sticking with the respectable sister, Constance, where I found the story of Sophia, the sinner, much more interesting. I believe this is one of Bennett's more inaccessible books, and although I didn't enjoy it overmuch, there were flashes of greatness which would encourage me to read one of this other works before I make a final judgement.

Dull and Dry but Addictive, 13 Aug 2008
Anna Of The Five Towns is often dull, but the emotional arc makes it compulsive reading. Unfortunately this doesn't pay off, as the ending feels empty.

Anna and her sister Agnes live under the strict rule of their cold-hearted and miserly father. On Anna's birthday she comes into her fortune, but remains controlled by her father. One of the properties she owns is a works run by Titus Price and his son Willie, and Anna watches, morally pained, as her father rightfully but cruelly extracts money from these men. Meanwhile, Anna is courted by Henry Mynors, makes friends with the cream of society Suttons, and seeks a stronger faith in God.

Bennett's descriptions are excellent, a skill I find lacking in most authors, but he struggles with plot and character. Sometimes the detail is so heavy that it slips into present tense, and has nothing to do with the characters at all. Characters will often have long dull conversations about money, duty or tea, and while I believe the characters would be discussing this if they were real, it isn't relevant in the fiction.

In Frank Swinnerton's introduction to the novel, he says, `Bennett admitted that at first he had difficulty in gaining even `a dim vision' of some of the characters.' At first? This is clearly still at fault. Bennett's dry and emotionless style swamps the characters, who never become much more than names. They never reveal other layers that I assumed must be lurking and were going to go somewhere in the conclusion. No characters feel or sound real, or have convincing emotions. They are all wrapped in cotton wool, disconnected from the world. Bennett often states character personalities through flashback and statements, but doesn't show them, so these can be hard to believe. Beatrice Sutton appears to be the comedy character, and only exists as this device, almost as if Bennett was told he needed to add some comedy.

Swinnerton writes that `The strength...of Anna of the Five Towns lies in its sincerity and freedom from pretentiousness.' I don't see this as strength. Sincerity and freedom from pretentiousness can be used to describe children, and are hardly praiseworthy attributes in an adult's piece of fiction. Bennett's writing style is very dry and failed to interest or grip me. What kept me reading was the horrific curiosity to discover what was the approaching tragedy continually hinted at.

Bennett refers to Anna Of The Five Towns as `a sermon against parental tyranny', and much of the book is indeed focused on this theme. However, the blurb gives away what is really important, which spoils the story as this doesn't become apparent until the penultimate page (and is a bit late). With hindsight, I can see that the hints and plot developments were heading for the conclusion, but while I was reading it this was not apparent, and other plot strands that are not tied up seemed far more important. Developments that lead to the conclusion are constantly hinted at and yet never truly exist in the story. So the ending, when it turns out what the oft-mentioned inevitable tragedy is, didn't bother me. What about the important themes of the book? While the ending-relevant stuff is subtle, and subtlety is good, Anna Of The Five Towns doesn't satisfy, because it ends on only that and ignores everything else. Looking back, everything else now feels like a waste of my time, meaning I have no desire to read it again.

This edition comes with a mildly interesting introduction by Frank Swinnerton, written in 1953. It doesn't really seem to have a point, but it enlightened me on a few things, as I knew nothing of Bennett before I read it. As for the cover illustration of five girls skipping in a circle near some factories, well it doesn't really conjure the book and its potato-print style actually made me assume the book was boring, if you go by judging books by their covers, which is the whole point of covers. And it was quite boring.

Real life 100 years ago, 07 Jun 2007
Like other reviewers, I didn't expect that much from this book. I only bought it because Bennett's work was praised in BBC4's Edwardian series. I found it truly absorbing. The ending lingers with me and I'll remember the characters for a long time. It's the first Arnold Bennett book I've read and I'll definitely search out some more of his work.

A "modern" victorian novel, 02 Sep 2006
I enjoyed this book more than I expected. It is an intelligent, well drawn debate of the role of women in society, duty and, centrally, the conflict between morality and capitalism which is almost as relevant now as in the industrial revolution when it was written. Unfortunately, some of the characters are not particularly well described. Henry Myors is an example of this, but this is relatively unimportant as he is there merely as a symbol of the attractive, successful businessman. However, the characterisation of Willie Price is similarly unsuccessful and this is more important, considering his central role in the novel. In general, however this is a well realised tragedy - Anna's involvement in the "valid" persecution of those who owe her money ultimately leads to the destruction of her happiness.

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS, 01 Nov 2005
If you like Arnold Bennett and his wonderful descriptions of life in the Victorian era and the grim images of the potteries then you will like this. So far as Iam concerned Clayhanger is his masterpiece but most of his stuff is a good read although I couldn't get into the Old Wive's Tales

Bread and butter, 26 Apr 1999
A truly great read, much better than I'd been lead to believe from having read Bennett's Grand Babylon Hotel. In this one, a miserly, extremely nasty, insulting, but well-off grouch of a father is raising two daughters under extraordinarily miserable conditions in a small, dull and pious industrial town. Everybody seems to eat nothing but bread and butter and go to church. Anna is the older of the two and she and her father are very well drawn characters. There's a two-week vacation on the Isle of Man and it's all in all a great read. I feel as if I've been listening in on the lives of my grandparents and great-grandparents a hundred years ago or so. Bennett is a subtle and compelling writer with a highly readable style. You can zip right through this book.

Interesting Quote: "All knew of the calamity and had received from it a new interest in life."

why is this author forgotten, 13 Sep 2006
I discovered Arnold Bennett almost by accident when clearing a house after the death of a much loved relative. Why is this author forgotten and relegated to the 'reserve stock' in my local library? The book is a masterpiece of social history. The descriptions of life in the potteries at the turn of the century evoke a time and place so distant and yet so real at the same time. His observations of human interactions, relationships and foibles are as relevant today as they were almost a century ago . He is a master of the English language and must not be forgotten. Why are his novels not in the libraries and bookshops the length and breadth of the country?

Forget Modern Day Fiction...., 03 Mar 2006
I have just read an old, battered copy of this novel, with its pages coming adrift and its hardback cover yellowed with age but it has been one of the best reads I've had in years. Bennett's enveloping saga of 2 very different sisters from young adulthood to old age and death is so skillfully and powerfully written that, at times, it took my breath away. I tried to get a copy of The Old Wive's Tale from my local library, having just enjoyed Bennett's Anna of the Five Towns. When I asked for the author by name the librarian smirked and said she didn't think he was very popular any more. (It was almost a case of Arnold WHO?) It's a crime! I find Bennett's writing in this novel as fresh and relevant to today's human condition as any of our present day writers. Please read this novel, you will be glad you did!!

wise, worldly and nicely understated., 26 Jul 2004
I confess that the first time I tried to read this it defeated me, I found it simply too slow-moving, but a few months on I decided to give it another go and was very pleasently surprised. It is the life-story of two sisters, Constance and Sophia, daughters of a small-town draper. Constance is steady and reliable, she marries one of the assistants in the shop and they take over the business when her father dies. Her life is relatively uneventful, work punctuated by the birth of her beloved only child, (with whom she is absolutely besotted), and the untimely death of her husband. Sophia by contrast elopes with a travelling salesman, and runs away with him to Paris, where he proceeds to squander his fortune and then finally abandons her. Sophia though has the commonsense of her upbringing to fall back on, and manages to rise above all this.

Much has been written about the influence of the 19th century French realist writers on Bennett in this book, but I found him better. Zola's pessimistic view of life I find too exasperating at times. In this book Sophia develops realistically from a dreamy irresponsible schoolgirl into a young woman with a robust attitude to the world. Nowhere is this done better than the chapters where she falls ill with a fever and is taken in by a middle-aged courtesan. When the courtesan is left abandoned by her last lover, Sophia is shocked by the way the lady has humiliated herself trying to hang onto him. Why didn't she simply put aside some of her vast earnings from her heyday for when this was bound to happen? Here we have the shop-keeper's daughter in all her tremendous commonsense glory. Her feckless husband is also well-drawn and very believable. He's not wicked, just simply devoid of any kind of sense or responsibility.

Most fascinating for me though was Bennett's immaculate reconstruction of 19th-century small-town English life, and the day-to-day lives of the people living in St Luke's Square. Nowhere does he do this better than Constance's husband being quietly overwhelmed with emotion when he learns he's at long last to be a dad, and the townsfolk's dignified protest when one of their own is hanged for accidentally killing his alcoholic wife. I haven't yet read any of Bennett's other books, but I find it hard to believe they come much better than this.

Subtle, humane, ironic, 05 Mar 2003
While Bennett is always readable and usually very enjoyable, this book is probably his masterpiece. It tells the story of two sisters from the Five Towns whose lives take very different turns and who, after many years, are restored to one another.
Constance remains in the family business and while strong and determined, maintains the outlook of a provincial matron, facing the ups and downs, economic and social, of life running a large drapery shop. Sophia runs off to Paris with a cad, soon gets his measure and then decides to make her own life running an upmarket boarding house. While neither woman's life can be said to be happy or especially fulfilled, the reconciliation of the two sisters is moving and believable (it made me cry, anyway!) and their last years described with a gentle, sardonic humour which adds a different dimension to that of most of the French realists Bennett admired. This is an outstanding novel and in my view should be on the reading list of everyone who wants to think of themselves as a well-read person!

Lovely; slowly builds up in detail to grip you, 27 Jun 2001
A fantastic book.

Very slowly, very exactly it builds up the story of the lives of two sisters through the 19th century. From birth & childhood in a small town, through there events of their lives, you get a wonderfully rich picture of them, their charachters & the surrounding life.

The jacket describes this as ".. one of the most succesful attempts - if not the most succesful - to rival the French realistic novel". That is truye as gar as it goes, but it misses the fact that I found this significantly more compelling, more interesting & richer than any of the French realist novels I've read lately. But perhaps that's because I'm English and the history resonates...?

A friend recommended this, and I admit, rather to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It is long, and it does take a while to get into it, but it is worth taking the time.

From the back cover of the book...., 20 Aug 2006
"In HILDA LESSWAYS (the second volume of the trilogy that begins with CLAYHANGER and ends with THESE TWAIN) Bennett relates the early life of Hilda Lessways, before her marriage to Edwin Clayhanger. Her involvement with the enigmatic, self-made man, George Cannon, and his enterprises takes her from the offices of an embryo newspaper in the Five Towns to a venture into the guesthouse business in Brighton."

"As in CLAYHANGER Bennett, in Walter Allen's words, `follows the grain of life'. Hilda, in her guilt at having failed her mother, in her relationship with Cannon, in her growing fascination for young Clayhanger, in the reality of her hopes and tragedies, is one of Bennett's most living heroines."

CLAYHANGER, 18 Oct 2005
As a former print worker in the old fashioned days I found his descriptions of the print trade interesting but as well as giving graphic descriptions of the potteries he also brings his characters to life. I set about reading all Arnold Bennett's books but I only found this one a great read.

A novel with great integrity, 31 Mar 2003
A boy grows up, meets, loses, then finds again, a girl. This is a weighty volume, packed with detail and interesting characters. A great deal of its success comes from the character of Edwin Clayhanger, a person with a kind of shambling charm. You are led to empathise with Edwin completely; you see everything from his point of view, and you hear his thoughts. This book creates a very real world. There are some archaic turns of speech, which sometimes get a bit irritating, and a bit too much authorial comment, but it's a very readable book.

An engaging read., 28 Apr 1999
The story of a man from leaving school to middle age, set in an industrial town in the English midlands at the end of the 19th century. Sounds boring, but it isn't. Slow for the first few chapters, but then I found it unputdownable, you really get interested and want to know what happens. Lots of description of the environment of the time. No sex or violence, written not long after these actual times, so some bits of old fashioned prose. This aside, reminded me of Len Deighton's style of writing. I was a bit doubtful about buying this book, but I'm pleased I did.

Bennett's masterpiece, 01 Feb 1999
This book is the crowning achievement of one of the most under-rated writers in the English language. The characterisation, the pain and the sheer intuitive understanding of the human condition combine to make this truly a masterpiece. Snobs may look on Bennett as 'middle-brow' or dated; this book proves he is no such thing. Finer than Old Wives Tales, it entrenches the realist style he learned from France (Zola,Flaubert etc) within a setting that brought out his best; the potteries. And throughout you find the eye for detail, the joy in the 'interestingness of existence' (his own phrase). Rediscover this forgotten gem.

'The Old Wives Tale' is up there with the best , 02 Jul 2008
Arnold Bennett's 'The Old Wives Tale' is well worth the read. Bennett was just as famous as the likes of JK Rowling in his time, even more famous than Viriginia Wolfe. This book is a classic, it is set in the Potteries and tells the tale of two sisters Constance and Sophia growing up in Victorian England.
I do not want to give too much away about the story, but Bennett's understanding of these two totally different characters is what makes this book one of the greats.

A complex, grim book, 08 Nov 2007
This is a curious hybrid, Victorian in subject and yet written in a modernist style, approaching at times the work of D. H. Lawrence. Bennett sets his work in the potteries of the black country, but the content and style can be compared to Lawrence's works, Women in Love and the Rainbow, although not quite as anarchic. In length and morals, this does fit the image of the Victorian triple decker quite neatly. It is not always an easy read, and the subject matter is grim, with much death and tragedy to speed the reader on. It concerns the lives and histories of two sisters, and follows their lives, as one becomes a respectable merchant's wife, and one runs away with a rake and pays for her life of sin. The story is unevenly balanced much of the time, sticking with the respectable sister, Constance, where I found the story of Sophia, the sinner, much more interesting. I believe this is one of Bennett's more inaccessible books, and although I didn't enjoy it overmuch, there were flashes of greatness which would encourage me to read one of this other works before I make a final judgement.

Dull and Dry but Addictive, 13 Aug 2008
Anna Of The Five Towns is often dull, but the emotional arc makes it compulsive reading. Unfortunately this doesn't pay off, as the ending feels empty.

Anna and her sister Agnes live under the strict rule of their cold-hearted and miserly father. On Anna's birthday she comes into her fortune, but remains controlled by her father. One of the properties she owns is a works run by Titus Price and his son Willie, and Anna watches, morally pained, as her father rightfully but cruelly extracts money from these men. Meanwhile, Anna is courted by Henry Mynors, makes friends with the cream of society Suttons, and seeks a stronger faith in God.

Bennett's descriptions are excellent, a skill I find lacking in most authors, but he struggles with plot and character. Sometimes the detail is so heavy that it slips into present tense, and has nothing to do with the characters at all. Characters will often have long dull conversations about money, duty or tea, and while I believe the characters would be discussing this if they were real, it isn't relevant in the fiction.

In Frank Swinnerton's introduction to the novel, he says, `Bennett admitted that at first he had difficulty in gaining even `a dim vision' of some of the characters.' At first? This is clearly still at fault. Bennett's dry and emotionless style swamps the characters, who never become much more than names. They never reveal other layers that I assumed must be lurking and were going to go somewhere in the conclusion. No characters feel or sound real, or have convincing emotions. They are all wrapped in cotton wool, disconnected from the world. Bennett often states character personalities through flashback and statements, but doesn't show them, so these can be hard to believe. Beatrice Sutton appears to be the comedy character, and only exists as this device, almost as if Bennett was told he needed to add some comedy.

Swinnerton writes that `The strength...of Anna of the Five Towns lies in its sincerity and freedom from pretentiousness.' I don't see this as strength. Sincerity and freedom from pretentiousness can be used to describe children, and are hardly praiseworthy attributes in an adult's piece of fiction. Bennett's writing style is very dry and failed to interest or grip me. What kept me reading was the horrific curiosity to discover what was the approaching tragedy continually hinted at.

Bennett refers to Anna Of The Five Towns as `a sermon against parental tyranny', and much of the book is indeed focused on this theme. However, the blurb gives away what is really important, which spoils the story as this doesn't become apparent until the penultimate page (and is a bit late). With hindsight, I can see that the hints and plot developments were heading for the conclusion, but while I was reading it this was not apparent, and other plot strands that are not tied up seemed far more important. Developments that lead to the conclusion are constantly hinted at and yet never truly exist in the story. So the ending, when it turns out what the oft-mentioned inevitable tragedy is, didn't bother me. What about the important themes of the book? While the ending-relevant stuff is subtle, and subtlety is good, Anna Of The Five Towns doesn't satisfy, because it ends on only that and ignores everything else. Looking back, everything else now feels like a waste of my time, meaning I have no desire to read it again.

This edition comes with a mildly interesting introduction by Frank Swinnerton, written in 1953. It doesn't really seem to have a point, but it enlightened me on a few things, as I knew nothing of Bennett before I read it. As for the cover illustration of five girls skipping in a circle near some factories, well it doesn't really conjure the book and its potato-print style actually made me assume the book was boring, if you go by judging books by their covers, which is the whole point of covers. And it was quite boring.

Real life 100 years ago, 07 Jun 2007
Like other reviewers, I didn't expect that much from this book. I only bought it because Bennett's work was praised in BBC4's Edwardian series. I found it truly absorbing. The ending lingers with me and I'll remember the characters for a long time. It's the first Arnold Bennett book I've read and I'll definitely search out some more of his work.

A "modern" victorian novel, 02 Sep 2006
I enjoyed this book more than I expected. It is an intelligent, well drawn debate of the role of women in society, duty and, centrally, the conflict between morality and capitalism which is almost as relevant now as in the industrial revolution when it was written. Unfortunately, some of the characters are not particularly well described. Henry Myors is an example of this, but this is relatively unimportant as he is there merely as a symbol of the attractive, successful businessman. However, the characterisation of Willie Price is similarly unsuccessful and this is more important, considering his central role in the novel. In general, however this is a well realised tragedy - Anna's involvement in the "valid" persecution of those who owe her money ultimately leads to the destruction of her happiness.

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS, 01 Nov 2005
If you like Arnold Bennett and his wonderful descriptions of life in the Victorian era and the grim images of the potteries then you will like this. So far as Iam concerned Clayhanger is his masterpiece but most of his stuff is a good read although I couldn't get into the Old Wive's Tales

Bread and butter, 26 Apr 1999
A truly great read, much better than I'd been lead to believe from having read Bennett's Grand Babylon Hotel. In this one, a miserly, extremely nasty, insulting, but well-off grouch of a father is raising two daughters under extraordinarily miserable conditions in a small, dull and pious industrial town. Everybody seems to eat nothing but bread and butter and go to church. Anna is the older of the two and she and her father are very well drawn characters. There's a two-week vacation on the Isle of Man and it's all in all a great read. I feel as if I've been listening in on the lives of my grandparents and great-grandparents a hundred years ago or so. Bennett is a subtle and compelling writer with a highly readable style. You can zip right through this book.

Interesting Quote: "All knew of the calamity and had received from it a new interest in life."

why is this author forgotten, 13 Sep 2006
I discovered Arnold Bennett almost by accident when clearing a house after the death of a much loved relative. Why is this author forgotten and relegated to the 'reserve stock' in my local library? The book is a masterpiece of social history. The descriptions of life in the potteries at the turn of the century evoke a time and place so distant and yet so real at the same time. His observations of human interactions, relationships and foibles are as relevant today as they were almost a century ago . He is a master of the English language and must not be forgotten. Why are his novels not in the libraries and bookshops the length and breadth of the country?

Forget Modern Day Fiction...., 03 Mar 2006
I have just read an old, battered copy of this novel, with its pages coming adrift and its hardback cover yellowed with age but it has been one of the best reads I've had in years. Bennett's enveloping saga of 2 very different sisters from young adulthood to old age and death is so skillfully and powerfully written that, at times, it took my breath away. I tried to get a copy of The Old Wive's Tale from my local library, having just enjoyed Bennett's Anna of the Five Towns. When I asked for the author by name the librarian smirked and said she didn't think he was very popular any more. (It was almost a case of Arnold WHO?) It's a crime! I find Bennett's writing in this novel as fresh and relevant to today's human condition as any of our present day writers. Please read this novel, you will be glad you did!!

wise, worldly and nicely understated., 26 Jul 2004
I confess that the first time I tried to read this it defeated me, I found it simply too slow-moving, but a few months on I decided to give it another go and was very pleasently surprised. It is the life-story of two sisters, Constance and Sophia, daughters of a small-town draper. Constance is steady and reliable, she marries one of the assistants in the shop and they take over the business when her father dies. Her life is relatively uneventful, work punctuated by the birth of her beloved only child, (with whom she is absolutely besotted), and the untimely death of her husband. Sophia by contrast elopes with a travelling salesman, and runs away with him to Paris, where he proceeds to squander his fortune and then finally abandons her. Sophia though has the commonsense of her upbringing to fall back on, and manages to rise above all this.

Much has been written about the influence of the 19th century French realist writers on Bennett in this book, but I found him better. Zola's pessimistic view of life I find too exasperating at times. In this book Sophia develops realistically from a dreamy irresponsible schoolgirl into a young woman with a robust attitude to the world. Nowhere is this done better than the chapters where she falls ill with a fever and is taken in by a middle-aged courtesan. When the courtesan is left abandoned by her last lover, Sophia is shocked by the way the lady has humiliated herself trying to hang onto him. Why didn't she simply put aside some of her vast earnings from her heyday for when this was bound to happen? Here we have the shop-keeper's daughter in all her tremendous commonsense glory. Her feckless husband is also well-drawn and very believable. He's not wicked, just simply devoid of any kind of sense or responsibility.

Most fascinating for me though was Bennett's immaculate reconstruction of 19th-century small-town English life, and the day-to-day lives of the people living in St Luke's Square. Nowhere does he do this better than Constance's husband being quietly overwhelmed with emotion when he learns he's at long last to be a dad, and the townsfolk's dignified protest when one of their own is hanged for accidentally killing his alcoholic wife. I haven't yet read any of Bennett's other books, but I find it hard to believe they come much better than this.

Subtle, humane, ironic, 05 Mar 2003
While Bennett is always readable and usually very enjoyable, this book is probably his masterpiece. It tells the story of two sisters from the Five Towns whose lives take very different turns and who, after many years, are restored to one another.
Constance remains in the family business and while strong and determined, maintains the outlook of a provincial matron, facing the ups and downs, economic and social, of life running a large drapery shop. Sophia runs off to Paris with a cad, soon gets his measure and then decides to make her own life running an upmarket boarding house. While neither woman's life can be said to be happy or especially fulfilled, the reconciliation of the two sisters is moving and believable (it made me cry, anyway!) and their last years described with a gentle, sardonic humour which adds a different dimension to that of most of the French realists Bennett admired. This is an outstanding novel and in my view should be on the reading list of everyone who wants to think of themselves as a well-read person!

Lovely; slowly builds up in detail to grip you, 27 Jun 2001
A fantastic book.

Very slowly, very exactly it builds up the story of the lives of two sisters through the 19th century. From birth & childhood in a small town, through there events of their lives, you get a wonderfully rich picture of them, their charachters & the surrounding life.

The jacket describes this as ".. one of the most succesful attempts - if not the most succesful - to rival the French realistic novel". That is truye as gar as it goes, but it misses the fact that I found this significantly more compelling, more interesting & richer than any of the French realist novels I've read lately. But perhaps that's because I'm English and the history resonates...?

A friend recommended this, and I admit, rather to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It is long, and it does take a while to get into it, but it is worth taking the time.

From the back cover of the book...., 20 Aug 2006
"In HILDA LESSWAYS (the second volume of the trilogy that begins with CLAYHANGER and ends with THESE TWAIN) Bennett relates the early life of Hilda Lessways, before her marriage to Edwin Clayhanger. Her involvement with the enigmatic, self-made man, George Cannon, and his enterprises takes her from the offices of an embryo newspaper in the Five Towns to a venture into the guesthouse business in Brighton."

"As in CLAYHANGER Bennett, in Walter Allen's words, `follows the grain of life'. Hilda, in her guilt at having failed her mother, in her relationship with Cannon, in her growing fascination for young Clayhanger, in the reality of her hopes and tragedies, is one of Bennett's most living heroines."

CLAYHANGER, 18 Oct 2005
As a former print worker in the old fashioned days I found his descriptions of the print trade interesting but as well as giving graphic descriptions of the potteries he also brings his characters to life. I set about reading all Arnold Bennett's books but I only found this one a great read.

A novel with great integrity, 31 Mar 2003
A boy grows up, meets, loses, then finds again, a girl. This is a weighty volume, packed with detail and interesting characters. A great deal of its success comes from the character of Edwin Clayhanger, a person with a kind of shambling charm. You are led to empathise with Edwin completely; you see everything from his point of view, and you hear his thoughts. This book creates a very real world. There are some archaic turns of speech, which sometimes get a bit irritating, and a bit too much authorial comment, but it's a very readable book.

An engaging read., 28 Apr 1999
The story of a man from leaving school to middle age, set in an industrial town in the English midlands at the end of the 19th century. Sounds boring, but it isn't. Slow for the first few chapters, but then I found it unputdownable, you really get interested and want to know what happens. Lots of description of the environment of the time. No sex or violence, written not long after these actual times, so some bits of old fashioned prose. This aside, reminded me of Len Deighton's style of writing. I was a bit doubtful about buying this book, but I'm pleased I did.

Bennett's masterpiece, 01 Feb 1999
This book is the crowning achievement of one of the most under-rated writers in the English language. The characterisation, the pain and the sheer intuitive understanding of the human condition combine to make this truly a masterpiece. Snobs may look on Bennett as 'middle-brow' or dated; this book proves he is no such thing. Finer than Old Wives Tales, it entrenches the realist style he learned from France (Zola,Flaubert etc) within a setting that brought out his best; the potteries. And throughout you find the eye for detail, the joy in the 'interestingness of existence' (his own phrase). Rediscover this forgotten gem.

Absorbing, relentlessly engrossing and quite shocking, 07 Jun 2002
Bennett is master of the study of miniscule, and this is no exception. An intense, shocking study of a year in the lives of Mr Earlsforward, a bookseller in Clerkenwell, and the women he marries in middle age, Mrs Arb, and their devoted charwoman, Elsie. Earlsforward is obsessively economical in life - with money, with words, with affection and certainly with commen sense. And his obsessions have a profound, shocking, and ultimately fatal, impact on those over whom he is master, sometimes - his wife and his "general". If you like Bennett, you'll love this. If you havn't read Bennett before, then this is the perfect introduction.

An absorbing story of a bookdealer's miserliness, 18 Aug 2001
I think this is the finest of Bennett's books that isn't set in the Five Towns. It's set in the Clerkenwell area of London. Mr Earlforward is an antiquarian bookseller with a shop in Riceyman Steps and is a miser. The extent of his miserliness shocks you as you read because of Bennett's accurate portrayal of such obsessiveness and its effect upon the lives of two women, his obliging, self-sacrificing charwoman Elsie and the widowed shopkeeper Mrs Arb who he marries in middle age largely because of her seemingly economical nature. The honeymoon consists of a bus ride to visit Madame Tussauds. His new wife's vacuuming of the house and shop to clear decades of accumulated dust is to him an act of betrayal as if the dust that's drawn up is part of his wealth.. This seemingly drab story is in fact very absorbing because Bennett engages us in the interestingness of human nature, its quirks and oddities, and with his careful observation of working-class life in the locality. In one of the chapters there's a marvellous description of the problems of living in an over-crowded house in a slum where 'the adult inhabitants were always unhappy save when drinking alcohol or making love..'. The novel isn't depressing. It's amazing.

'The Old Wives Tale' is up there with the best , 02 Jul 2008
Arnold Bennett's 'The Old Wives Tale' is well worth the read. Bennett was just as famous as the likes of JK Rowling in his time, even more famous than Viriginia Wolfe. This book is a classic, it is set in the Potteries and tells the tale of two sisters Constance and Sophia growing up in Victorian England.
I do not want to give too much away about the story, but Bennett's understanding of these two totally different characters is what makes this book one of the greats.

A complex, grim book, 08 Nov 2007
This is a curious hybrid, Victorian in subject and yet written in a modernist style, approaching at times the work of D. H. Lawrence. Bennett sets his work in the potteries of the black country, but the content and style can be compared to Lawrence's works, Women in Love and the Rainbow, although not quite as anarchic. In length and morals, this does fit the image of the Victorian triple decker quite neatly. It is not always an easy read, and the subject matter is grim, with much death and tragedy to speed the reader on. It concerns the lives and histories of two sisters, and follows their lives, as one becomes a respectable merchant's wife, and one runs away with a rake and pays for her life of sin. The story is unevenly balanced much of the time, sticking with the respectable sister, Constance, where I found the story of Sophia, the sinner, much more interesting. I believe this is one of Bennett's more inaccessible books, and although I didn't enjoy it overmuch, there were flashes of greatness which would encourage me to read one of this other works before I make a final judgement.

Dull and Dry but Addictive, 13 Aug 2008
Anna Of The Five Towns is often dull, but the emotional arc makes it compulsive reading. Unfortunately this doesn't pay off, as the ending feels empty.

Anna and her sister Agnes live under the strict rule of their cold-hearted and miserly father. On Anna's birthday she comes into her fortune, but remains controlled by her father. One of the properties she owns is a works run by Titus Price and his son Willie, and Anna watches, morally pained, as her father rightfully but cruelly extracts money from these men. Meanwhile, Anna is courted by Henry Mynors, makes friends with the cream of society Suttons, and seeks a stronger faith in God.

Bennett's descriptions are excellent, a skill I find lacking in most authors, but he struggles with plot and character. Sometimes the detail is so heavy that it slips into present tense, and has nothing to do with the characters at all. Characters will often have long dull conversations about money, duty or tea, and while I believe the characters would be discussing this if they were real, it isn't relevant in the fiction.

In Frank Swinnerton's introduction to the novel, he says, `Bennett admitted that at first he had difficulty in gaining even `a dim vision' of some of the chara