A Life Like Other People's

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.

Praise

"A relentlessly self-aware memoir by Bennett (The Uncommon Reader, 2007, etc.), that most inward-searching of dramatists and autobiographers. The English have a fine confessional tradition, but when writing about family, the potential for embarrassment seems to silence, or at least gentle, many a brave voice . . . Not so Bennett, who writes affectingly and fearlessly of his mother's long, slow descent into dementia. Mam had had barmy days before, he writes, but that changed to depression . . . Fans of Bennett know what to expect—bracingly good prose, a well-seeded laugh here and there and much food for thought."—Kirkus Reviews

About the Author(s)

Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett has been one of England’s leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe. The History Boys (Faber, 2006) won six Tony Awards; his most recent play is The Habit of Art.

photo: Hugo Glendinning

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Excerpt

  There is a wood, the canal, the river, and above the river the railway and the road. It’s the first proper country that you get to as you come north out of Leeds, and going home on the train I pass the place quite often. Only these days I look. I’ve been passing the place for years without looking because I didn’t know it was a place; that anything had happened there to make it a place, let alone a place that had something to do with me.

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