An Unexpected Novella About Queen Elizabeth II

I had selected The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett for its brevity.  It's a novella that's only 120 pages in length. I hadn't expected to blog about it.  I imagined that there would only be enough content for a brief paragraph on Goodreads.   I now think I have enough comments for a few paragraphs.

                                 

The reader in question was the late monarch Queen Elizabeth II.  Let me emphasize that this did not happen.  It's a fictional tale.  Alan Bennett's Queen borrowed books from an imaginary traveling library that periodically came to Westminster which is the section of London where most of the British government is located.  

I looked up two authors that the Queen read.  There was Ivy Compton-Burnett whose novel she didn't care for, and Nancy Mitford whose work she decided to continue reading.  I decided that I wouldn't be reading either one of them.  The content that they deal with doesn't interest me.  I might have read Nancy Mitford when I was in my twenties, but not now.

Security confiscated a book she had been reading in a coach from which she was periodically waving at the public.  I would have been very irritated by the confiscation of my book.   The Queen requested another copy, but that would mean she'd need to re-read from the beginning.  That would be time wasted.  Since my reading is of great importance to me, I suppose that I'd consider this a significant drawback to being Queen if I were one. 

As someone who rarely likes the classics, I was pleased by the Queen deciding that Henry James "needed a good talking to".  I tried to read Henry James once, as I recall.  I think the James book that I attempted to read was Daisy Miller.  I don't believe that I got very far with it.  I was also pleased that the Queen disliked Jane Austen.  She thought that the characters were too similar. I don't want to deal with even one character like the ones in a Jane Austen novel.  I despise the entire Regency genre.

Elizabeth II got to read aloud from A Tale of Two Cities  for a Christmas broadcast.  This happens to be a favorite of mine which makes it a rare exception among the classics.  I hope she enjoyed the book as much as I did.

There was a surprise ending which I hadn't expected at all. I hadn't thought that this Queen would do anything surprising.  In fact, the actual Queen Elizabeth II probably never wanted to surprise.  The monarchy is supposed to be a predictable and dependable element of   English society.  At least, that's the way I see it.  English readers of this blog may have a different perspective on the monarchy.  I would give this book a grade of B-.