The Old Wives' Tale - Softcover

Bennett, Arnold

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099595354 ISBN 13: 9780099595359

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2014

Synopsis

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SATHNAM SANGHERA

You might find it hard to imagine that those stout ageing spinsters living quietly in small English towns ever led lives of passion or hardship, that they ever possessed beauty or romantic ideals. In The Old Wives' Tale, Arnold Bennett tells the story of two such old wives, sisters Constance and Sophia, from youth, through marriage, heartbreak, triumphs and disasters, to old age. In doing so, he reveals with careful compassion the intense inner lives that throb beneath every seemingly insignificant exterior.

About this title

Review:

"Bennett's masterpiece... There are few more moving accounts of the effects of time, the passage of history and the slow encroachment of age than this remarkable, epic novel" (Guardian)

"It's not just a wonderful story; it's also an expressionist masterpiece, almost surreal at times. It's also an amazing feat of empathy... It's also very intimate, and highly emotional. In fact, it's the perfect novel" (Deborah Moggach Independent)

"Arguably the finest novel written by an Englishman in the 20th century" (Daily Telegraph)

"Arnold Bennett did write one indisputable masterpiece, The Old Wives' Tale, and that is where I recommend you start... Each time I'm in the midst of reading it, I think it the best novel ever written" (Wendy Lesser New York Times)

"For Bennett...compassion is not soggy. It involves understanding. The core of his writing is psychological truth, clinically observed, crisply reported" (Sunday Times)

Book Description:

A long-neglected twentieth century masterpiece about the lives of two sisters, spanning seventy years of the nineteenth century from Northern England to Paris

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0099595354
• ISBN 13: 9780099595359
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 752