Book Summary and Reviews of A Life Like Other People's by Alan Bennett

A Life Like Other People's by Alan Bennett

A Life Like Other People's

by Alan Bennett

  • Published:
  • Sep 2010, 256 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

In this poignant memoir of his parents' marriage, Alan Bennett recalls the lost world of his childhood and the lives, loves, and deaths of his unforgettable aunties, Kathleen and Myra. First published in the acclaimed collection Untold Stories, this tender, intimate family portrait beautifully captures the Bennetts' hopes, disappointments, and yearning for a life like other people's. With the sudden descent of his mother into depression, and later dementia, Bennett uncovers a long-held family secret in this extraordinarily moving and at times irresistibly funny work of autobiography.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Alan Bennett's memoir of his parents' marriage and his mother's battles with depression is clear-eyed, touching, occasionally waspish, not always charitable, and ever honest." - The Independent (UK)

This information about A Life Like Other People's was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Alan Bennett Author Biography

Author and actor Alan Bennett was born in Armley in Leeds, Yorkshire in 1934. He attended Leeds Modern School and learned Russian at the Join Services School for Linguists during his National Service, during which he attended Cambridge University. He applied for a scholarship at Oxford University from which he graduated with a first-class degree in History

After some time teaching and studying at Oxford, in 1960 Bennett, along with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, and Peter Cook, achieved instant fame by appearing at the Edinburgh Festival in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe. His first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and ...

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