Smut: Two Unseemly Stories: The Greening of Mrs Donaldson & The Shielding of Mrs Forbes (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

Readers used to Bennett's style should enjoy these two, rather short, stories. As usual, Bennett explores the oddities of peoples' lives and the strangeness of language. The first story is probably the better. The second is a bit 'clunky' and you get the feeling that Bennett rushed to finish it.

As always, the author creates people you can care about. There is nothing gross or too explicit in these stories. As is often the case with Bennett, the characters are quaint rather than smutty. My only real reservation is how slim this volume is (or must be if I wasn't reading it on a Kindle.) In a full price book, we might reasonably expect at least one more story.

In his dotage there can be little doubt that Alan Bennett
is, indeed, a National Treasure! It is his incomparable
capacity to dignify the small details of lives lived quietly
behind net curtains; his dry, droll humour and perhaps above
all his innate humanity which makes his work so enjoyable.

These two stories, read by Mr Bennett, in this fine BBC Audiobook
recording, produced by Gordon House, find him as his hilarious best.
His capacity to combine the ordinary with the grotesque in these
tales stands up well to best which he has written in a long career.
His voice has become an old friend; a Maiden-Aunt of a voice whose
pursed lips seem evermore tightly drawn into a tight disapproving bud,
the better to deliver his unseemly observations! A voice overheard on
the top deck of a bus or across the liver and sausages on a butcher's
marble slab. The hidden and quietly improper voice of Little England.

Mrs Donaldson, in 'The Greening Of Mrs Donaldson, is a marvellous
invention. A widow who, to expand her horizons, takes on a job of
role-playing pathological conditions to medical students (another kind
of Naked Civil Servant' if you will!) I had not know that such an occupation
existed until now but Mr Bennett brings the gory details to life in all
their grisly scatological splendour! That her two lodgers also deliver
more than a little spice into her lonely world should not be begrudged.
Hilarity and pathos hold hands like familiar but uncomfortable bedfellows.

'The Shielding Of Mrs Forbes' is a wonderful confection too. A story
about secrets that are not really very secret at all. The small horrors
which lurk in the embers of a failed suburban marriage : lies, prejudice,
pretension and hypocrisy hung out like washing, with no hope of drying,
on a cold, grey, damp Northern morning. An unforgivingly vivid narrative.

There is a bit of swearing here and there (which Mr Bennett manages to
make sound more dirty than it might do in almost any other mouth!) so a
little caution might be in order if you have young ones around and don't
want to have to deal with embarrasing explanations. That said, it's a hoot!

'Smut' manages to be both seedy and quite precious in equal measure.

Highly Recommended.

If you liked Alan Bennett's TV monologues ("Talking Heads") or his autobiographical essays ("Untold Stories"), you might as well get Smut straight away. It has the same incisive wit and observation and delightful turn of expression.

If you aren't familiar with his writing, it is intelligent, entertaining, and funny, but in a deadpan, wry style, not laugh-aloud. His dour Yorkshire accent is perfectly suited to the style. For that reason I would strongly recommend the audio version, and I wouldn't be surprised if it there was no print version.

Be ready for some very explicit sex. If you are unsure whether it would offend you, I would suggest giving it a try. Although there are some graphic moments, it is extremely witty and - I hesitate before using the word "unique" but Alan Bennet finds a genuinely unique and delightful angle on the subject.