The Clothes They Stood Up In [Hardcover]

Alan Bennett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 2001

The Ransomes had been burgled. "Robbed," Mrs. Ransome said. "Burgled," Mr. Ransome corrected. Premises were burgled; persons were robbed. Mr. Ransome was a solicitor by profession and thought words mattered. Though "burgled" was the wrong word too. Burglars select; they pick; they remove one item and ignore others. There is a limit to what burglars can take: they seldom take easy chairs, for example, and even more seldom settees. These burglars did. They took everything.

This swift-moving comic fable will surprise you with its concealed depths. When the sedate Ransomes return from the opera to find their Notting Hill flat stripped absolutely bare—down to the toilet paper off the roll (a hard-to-find shade of forget-me-not blue)—they face a dilemma: Who are they without the things they've spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly the world is full of unlimited and frightening possibility. But just as they begin adjusting to this giddy freedom, a newfound interest in sex, and a lack of comfy chairs, a surreal reversal of events causes them to question their assumptions yet again.

The Ransomes' bafflement is the reader's delight. Alan Bennett's gentle but scathing wit, unerring ear for dialogue, and sense of the absurd make The Clothes They Stood Up In a memorable exploration of where in life true riches lie.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When life is pared down to the bare essentials, one can grow spirituallyAor shrink into one's basic instincts. Though profound statements as such are not to be found in British playwright Bennett's charmingly subversive and very amusing cautionary tale, his characters illustrate the principle in surprising ways. Mr. and Mrs. Ransome return to their London flat after a performance of Cos? fan tutte (Mozart's comic opera about changing identities) to find the place totally stripped. Even the casserole left warming in the oven is gone, along with the oven, all other appliances and every stitch of clothing. Mr. Ransome, a stodgy, misanthropic solicitor who is fussy about correct diction, is mainly concerned about the loss of his CD player and the earphones with which he has always insulated himself from his wife. Formerly cowed and repressed, Mrs. Ransome is surprised at her pleasure in replacing their lost possessions with a few inexpensive items. The burglary liberates her personality, allowing her to inch cautiously toward new interpersonal connectionsAfirst with an Asian grocer, then with the man who, the Ransomes eventually discover, has been living with their furniture and clothing in a storage facility, then with another man who holds the key to the bizarre thievery. Her social awakening occurs in counterpoint with her husband's more selfish gratifications, until a funny and fitting denouement permanently turns the tables between them. Bennett carries off his terse, surreal comedy with witty aplomb, adding to risibility with apt comments about the foibles of contemporary society and the consumer economy. (Feb. 8) Forecast: English readers familiar with Bennett's plays (The Madness of George III, etc.) snatched up this novella to the tune of 140,ooo copies. The premise of being left without any possessions is provocative enough to entice readers on these shores, and the small size of the volume (4x 6) reinforces the idea that simplicity can be liberating.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

British playwright Bennett here proves himself to be a master of fiction as well. Rosemary and Maurice, long-married but childless, return from a night at the opera to find that they have been divested of all their possessionsDright down to the toilet paper holder. Months later, they find that their habitat had been meticulously re-created in a storage facility. Ostensibly, the story involves finding out the who and the why of such an extraordinary chain of events, but it also exposes the abrasions and contusions, the fabrications and evasions that are common to many marriages. Rosemary is an immediately lovable character. Her innocence and her responses are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but her attempts to improve her marriage are also very poignant. This charming novel deserves a place in all fiction collections; one can only hope that Americans will receive it as warmly as their counterparts did.
-DJudith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 161 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (February 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375503064
• ISBN-13: 978-0375503061
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 4.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #962,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alan Bennett is a renowned playwright and essayist, a succession of whose plays have been staged at the Royal National Theatre and whose screenplay for The Madness of King George was nominated for an Academy Award. He made his first stage appearance with Beyond the Fringe and his latest play was The Lady in the Van with Maggie Smith. Episodes from his award-winning Talking Heads series have been shown on PBS. His first novel, The Clothes They Stood Up In, was published in 2000. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who would You Be?, February 14, 2001

By 

Mary G. Longorio "Texasbookgirl" (Eagle Mountain, UT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Clothes They Stood Up In (Hardcover)

Poor Maurice and Rosemary Ransome return home from the opera and discover their flat has been burglarized and everything has been taken. The dinner that was left warming in the oven, the furniture, the telephones even the toilet paper has been taken. After trying to convey the thouroughness of the robbery to the police (in an uncomfortable public phone booth , no less) Mr. Ransome returns to his empty house to wait with his wife...while waiting he notices not only the drapes but the curtain rings are gone! This slender British novel wittily and adeptly poses the question " What would you do, Who would you be, if everything was taken?". The Ransomes deal with the police (who proffer no hope of recovering their gear), the insurance company (however, EVERYTHING is gone, including the copy of their insurance policy) and wait for some semblance of normal to be restored in their lives. A few creature comforts are obtained to replace the many and then the tale takes a remarkable turn. This is a delightful tale, full of humor and with remarkable insight on people and their possessions. I have given my first copy away and have already reread the replacement book! A must have.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant, Amusing and Insightful, May 2, 2001

By 

Lee LS Rice (Birmingham, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Clothes They Stood Up In (Hardcover)

Ever since his days as part of 'Beyond The Fringe' in 1960, Alan Bennett has continued to hold a valued position in the affections of the British public. His 1987 collection of monologues, 'Talking Heads' are classics of the genre and in 1995 he was even nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay, 'The Madness Of King George'. 'The Clothes They Stood Up In' is a further testament to his popularity. Appearing first in 'The London Review Of Books', Bennett later read the story on Radio 4, a performance later released on cassette. Now it has been published in a volume of its own. Like much of his other work, it is a comic story with elements of tragedy. The title refers to all Mr. and Mrs. Ransome have left after they return home from a night at the opera. To the horror of this middle class couple, everything in their flat has gone missing including the telephone, the toilet paper (Mr. Ransome has to use his program from the opera), the light bulbs, and Mr. Ransome's prized Mozart collection. The comic situations developing from this crisis are improbable yet curiously still believable. Communication problems and individual idiosyncrasies propel the humour along in these hilarious sequences, with Bennett's observation making the farce seem all the more real. Social workers, the police and daytime television shows all find themselves on the receiving end of Bennett's gentle (albeit razor sharp) wit. The cold Mr. Ransome, painfully aware of his impression on others, begins to crack now his respectability is threatened. His wife on the other hand discovers her independence. Bennett has admitted he finds it easier to write through female personas, and he succeeds in showing Mrs. Ransome's gradual growth as a human being and disenchantment with her cosy, starched, pre-theft lifestyle. Bennett's irony gets many opportunities to manifest itself in this story, as does his ability to juxtapose incongruent ideas. His elegant writing style is littered with lavatories and dog excrament. When the Ransomes find an audio tape with two people having sex on it, Mrs. Ransome says "It sounds like custard boiling". The story's message seems to be a warning against suppressing the true self and not living life to the full. The latter part of the book is particularly scathing towards Mr. Ransome's stiff and awkward outlook. One suspects that Bennett is intervening, using the opportunity to attack pompous middle class behaviour. The climax is a poignant but positive ending to what is an amusing, moving and insightful story.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Priceless!, August 7, 2002

By 

Steve Benner "Stonegnome" (Lancaster, UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Clothes They Stood Up In (Hardcover)

Alan Bennett's writing so often reminds me of fractal forms; the twists and turns of his plots on the macro scale being matched perfectly on the micro scale by the endless convolutions of his individual sentences and paragraphs. There are times when his writing gives every impression of wandering aimlessly through a tangled mass of irrelevant side detail, with no possible single end point in mind, until suddenly, and with an almost shocking clarity, his words reveal themselves as carefully chosen after all, when they all unexpectedly lead plumb to centre of the narrative target that has been in his sights all along. I can see that, for some people, this technique may prove to be an impenetrable annoyance (although anyone brought up in Yorkshire - and more especially Leeds - where they talk like this all the time, should merely find it homely and comforting.) But examine his words closely and, for all their meandering, you'll see that they have an absolutely exquisite precision and economy to them. This is the work of a true (and truly English) literary craftsman.

This short story, "The Clothes They Stood Up In", receives the classic Alan Bennett treatment, both in terms of writing style and also in terms of another of his hallmarks: the at times almost surgical examination of the social mores (and boors) of Middle England. Although this book is very short indeed (it should not take even the most meticulous of readers more than a couple of hours to devour this tasty titbit) it nevertheless demonstrates this author's unerring capacity for dissecting away endless layers of social stereotyping, in order to expose the central nuggets of individuality at the heart of his characters (or else reveal such nuggets to be entirely absent) whilst at the same time pointing up the basically ridiculous natures - and faintly ludicrous habits - of even the most ordinary of people.

Amusing and poignant by turns, this small volume delivers some exquisite character studies of ordinary people in entirely extraordinary circumstances. As ever, it makes for a highly entertaining read for those open to Alan Bennett's distinctive writing style. Bargain hunters may like to be aware, though, that this story is available in various better-value boxed collections, alongside other Alan Bennett short stories (principally "Lady in the van" and "Father! Father! Burning Bright") There are also plans to publish it within a single compendium volume some time in 2002. Of course, some people may just consider such collections as altogether too much of a good thing!