- Paperback: 624 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; Reissue edition (30 Aug 1990)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140182551
- ISBN-13: 978-0140182552
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13.5 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 75,976 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
"Every stout, ageing woman is not grotesque -- far from it! -- but there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that that every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youth in her form and her movements and in her mind. And the fact that the change from the young girl to the stout ageing woman is made up of an infinite number of infinitesimal changes, each unperceived by her, only intensifies the pathos. It was at (the) instant (of this observation) that I was visited by the idea of writing the book which ultimately became The Old Wives' Tale." So writes Arnold Bennett in the preface to his masterpiece of realistic fiction, a book that follows the lives of two sisters, Constance and Sophia, from simple days in mid-Victorian England through the chaos and tumult of the modern age. Along the way, a novel is built, detail by rich detail, that rivals the great realistic works of Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Maupassant.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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!
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!
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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!!
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Back to the classics
A bookgroup choice - bought with a sense of obligation - it wouldn't have been my choice; hampered with those thoughts, I opened it reluctantly and was instantly captivated. Read more
Published on 12 Sep 2009 by M. Greenwood
why is this author forgotten
I discovered Arnold Bennett almost by accident when clearing a house after the death of a much loved relative. Read more
Published on 13 Sep 2006 by kathy
Lovely; slowly builds up in detail to grip you
A fantastic book.
Very slowly, very exactly it builds up the story of the lives of two sisters through the 19th century. Read more
Published on 27 Jun 2001
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