Articles liés à The Clothes They Stood Up in and the Lady in the Van:...

The Clothes They Stood Up in and the Lady in the Van: And, the Lady in the Van - Couverture souple

 
9780812969658: The Clothes They Stood Up in and the Lady in the Van: And, the Lady in the Van
Afficher les exemplaires de cette édition ISBN
 
 
Book by Bennett Alan

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Extrait :
From The Clothes They Stood Up In

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.

The Ransomes had been to the opera, to Così fan tutte (or Così as Mrs. Ransome had learned to call it). Mozart played an important part in their marriage. They had no children and but for Mozart would probably have split up years ago. Mr. Ransome always took a bath when he came home from work and then he had his supper. After supper he took another bath, this time in Mozart. He wallowed in Mozart; he luxuriated in him; he let the little Viennese soak away all the dirt and disgustingness he had had to sit through in his office all day. On this particular evening he had been to the public baths, Covent Garden, where their seats were immediately behind the Home Secretary. He too was taking a bath and washing away the cares of his day, cares, if only in the form of a statistic, that were about to include the Ransomes.

On a normal evening, though, Mr. Ransome shared his bath with no one, Mozart coming personalized via his headphones and a stack of complex and finely balanced stereo equipment that Mrs. Ransome was never allowed to touch. She blamed the stereo for the burglary as that was what the robbers were probably after in the first place. The theft of stereos is common; the theft of fitted carpets is not.

"Perhaps they wrapped the stereo in the carpet," said Mrs. Ransome.

Mr. Ransome shuddered and said her fur coat was more likely, whereupon Mrs. Ransome started crying again.

It had not been much of a Così. Mrs. Ransome could not follow the plot and Mr. Ransome, who never tried, found the performance did not compare with the four recordings he possessed of the work. The acting he invariably found distracting. "None of them knows what to do with their arms," he said to his wife in the interval. Mrs. Ransome thought it probably went further than their arms but did not say so. She was wondering if the casserole she had left in the oven would get too dry at Gas Mark 4. Perhaps 3 would have been better. Dry it may well have been but there was no need to have worried. The thieves took the oven and the casserole with it.

The Ransomes lived in an Edwardian block of flats the color of ox blood not far from Regent's Park. It was handy for the City, though Mrs. Ransome would have preferred something farther out, seeing herself with a trug in a garden, vaguely. But she was not gifted in that direction. An African violet that her cleaning lady had given her at Christmas had finally given up the ghost that very morning and she had been forced to hide it in the wardrobe out of Mrs. Clegg's way. More wasted effort. The wardrobe had gone too.

They had no neighbors to speak of, or seldom to. Occasionally they ran into people in the lift and both parties would smile cautiously. Once they had asked some newcomers on their floor around to sherry, but he had turned out to be what he called "a big band freak" and she had been a dental receptionist with a timeshare in Portugal, so one way and another it had been an awkward evening and they had never repeated the experience. These days the turnover of tenants seemed increasingly rapid and the lift more and more wayward. People were always moving in and out again, some of them Arabs.

"I mean," said Mrs. Ransome, "it's getting like a hotel."

"I wish you wouldn't keep saying 'I mean,' " said Mr. Ransome. "It adds nothing to the sense."

He got enough of what he called "this sloppy way of talking" at work; the least he could ask for at home, he felt, was correct English. So Mrs. Ransome, who normally had very little to say, now tended to say even less.

When the Ransomes had moved into Naseby Mansions the flats boasted a commissionaire in a plum- colored uniform that matched the color of the building. He had died one afternoon in 1982 as he was hailing a taxi for Mrs. Brabourne on the second floor, who had forgone it in order to let it take him to hospital. None of his successors had shown the same zeal in office or pride in the uniform and eventually the function of commissionaire had merged with that of the caretaker, who was never to be found on the door and seldom to be found anywhere, his lair a hot scullery behind the boiler room where he slept much of the day in an armchair that had been thrown out by one of the tenants.

On the night in question the caretaker was asleep, though unusually for him not in the armchair but at the theater. On the lookout for a classier type of girl he had decided to attend an adult education course where he had opted to study English; given the opportunity, he had told the lecturer, he would like to become a voracious reader. The lecturer had some exciting though not very well formulated ideas about art and the workplace, and learning he was a caretaker had got him tickets for the play of the same name, thinking the resultant insights would be a stimulant to group interaction. It was an evening the caretaker found no more satisfying than the Ransomes did Così and the insights he gleaned limited: "So far as your actual caretaking was concerned," he reported to the class, "it was bollocks." The lecturer consoled himself with the hope that, unknown to the caretaker, the evening might have opened doors. In this he was right: the doors in question belonged to the Ransomes' flat.
Présentation de l'éditeur :
From Alan Bennett, the author of The Madness of King George, come two stories about the strange nature of possessions...or the lack of them. In the nationally bestselling novel The Clothes They Stood Up In, the staid Ransomes return from the opera to find their Regent’s Park flat stripped bare--right down to the toilet-paper roll. Free of all their earthly belongings, the couple faces a perplexing question: Who are they without the things they’ve spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly a world of unlimited, frightening possibility opens up before them.

In “The Lady in the Van,” which The Village Voice called “one of the finest bursts of comic writing the twentieth century has produced,” Bennett recounts the strange life of Miss Shepherd, a London eccentric who parked her van (overstuffed with decades’ worth of old clothes, oozing batteries, and kitchen utensils still in their original packaging) in the author’s driveway for more than fifteen years. A mesmerizing portrait of an outsider with an acquisitive taste and an indomitable spirit, this biographical essay is drawn with equal parts fascination and compassion.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

  • ÉditeurRandom House Trade
  • Date d'édition2002
  • ISBN 10 0812969650
  • ISBN 13 9780812969658
  • ReliureBroché
  • Nombre de pages240
  • Evaluation vendeur

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis

Destinations, frais et délais

Ajouter au panier

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780812966435: The Clothes They Stood Up in and the Lady in the Van: And, the Lady in the Van

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  ISBN 13 :  9780812966435
Editeur : Random House Inc (P), 2002
Couverture souple

Meilleurs résultats de recherche sur AbeBooks

Image d'archives

Bennett, Alan
ISBN 10 : 0812969650 ISBN 13 : 9780812969658
Neuf paperback Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
zeebooks
(Foley, AL, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre paperback. Etat : New. May have light shelf wear due to warehouse storage and handling. N° de réf. du vendeur 240117065

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 9,11
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Bennett, Alan
ISBN 10 : 0812969650 ISBN 13 : 9780812969658
Neuf Couverture souple Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Books Unplugged
(Amherst, NY, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Etat : New. Buy with confidence! Book is in new, never-used condition. N° de réf. du vendeur bk0812969650xvz189zvxnew

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 13,79
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Bennett, Alan
ISBN 10 : 0812969650 ISBN 13 : 9780812969658
Neuf Paperback Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Save With Sam
(North Miami, FL, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Paperback. Etat : New. Brand New!. N° de réf. du vendeur 0812969650

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 13,83
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image fournie par le vendeur

Bennett, Alan
ISBN 10 : 0812969650 ISBN 13 : 9780812969658
Neuf Couverture souple Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
GreatBookPrices
(Columbia, MD, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Etat : New. N° de réf. du vendeur 972429-n

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 12,94
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : EUR 2,44
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Bennett, Alan
ISBN 10 : 0812969650 ISBN 13 : 9780812969658
Neuf Couverture souple Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Book Deals
(Tucson, AZ, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Etat : New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published. N° de réf. du vendeur 353-0812969650-new

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 15,43
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image fournie par le vendeur

Alan Bennett
ISBN 10 : 0812969650 ISBN 13 : 9780812969658
Neuf Paperback Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Grand Eagle Retail
(Wilmington, DE, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Paperback. Etat : new. Paperback. From Alan Bennett, the author of The Madness of King George, come two stories about the strange nature of possessions.or the lack of them. In the nationally bestselling novel The Clothes They Stood Up In, the staid Ransomes return from the opera to find their Regents Park flat stripped bare--right down to the toilet-paper roll. Free of all their earthly belongings, the couple faces a perplexing question: Who are they without the things theyve spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly a world of unlimited, frightening possibility opens up before them. In The Lady in the Van, which The Village Voice called one of the finest bursts of comic writing the twentieth century has produced, Bennett recounts the strange life of Miss Shepherd, a London eccentric who parked her van (overstuffed with decades worth of old clothes, oozing batteries, and kitchen utensils still in their original packaging) in the authors driveway for more than fifteen years. A mesmerizing portrait of an outsider with an acquisitive taste and an indomitable spirit, this biographical essay is drawn with equal parts fascination and compassion. From Alan Bennett, the author of "The Madness of King George, come two stories about the strange nature of possessions.or the lack of them. In the nationally bestselling novel The Clothes They Stood Up In, the staid Ransomes return from the opera to find their Regent's Park flat stripped bare—right down to the toilet-paper roll. Free of all their earthly belongings, the couple faces a perplexing question: Who are they without the things they've spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly a world of unlimited, frightening possibility opens up before them. In "The Lady in the Van," which "The Village Voice called "one of the finest bursts of comic writing the twentieth century has produced," Bennett recounts the strange life of Miss Shepherd, a London eccentric who parked her van (overstuffed with decades' worth of old clothes, oozing batteries, and kitchen utensils still in their original packaging) in the author's driveway for more than fifteen years. A mesmerizing portrait of an outsider with an acquisitive taste and an indomitable spirit, this biographical essay is drawn with equal parts fascination and compassion. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. N° de réf. du vendeur 9780812969658

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 17,15
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Alan Bennett
ISBN 10 : 0812969650 ISBN 13 : 9780812969658
Neuf PAP Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
PBShop.store US
(Wood Dale, IL, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre PAP. Etat : New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. N° de réf. du vendeur IB-9780812969658

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 19,03
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Bennett, Alan
ISBN 10 : 0812969650 ISBN 13 : 9780812969658
Neuf Couverture souple Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Ebooksweb
(Bensalem, PA, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Etat : New. . N° de réf. du vendeur 52GZZZ00YEUZ_ns

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 20,41
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Bennett, Alan
Edité par Random House Inc (2002)
ISBN 10 : 0812969650 ISBN 13 : 9780812969658
Neuf Paperback Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Russell Books
(Victoria, BC, Canada)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Paperback. Etat : New. Today Show Book Club. Special order direct from the distributor. N° de réf. du vendeur ING9780812969658

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 15,24
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : EUR 9,24
De Canada vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais
Image d'archives

Bennett, Alan
ISBN 10 : 0812969650 ISBN 13 : 9780812969658
Neuf Paperback Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
GoldenWavesOfBooks
(Fayetteville, TX, Etats-Unis)
Evaluation vendeur

Description du livre Paperback. Etat : new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. N° de réf. du vendeur Holz_New_0812969650

Plus d'informations sur ce vendeur | Contacter le vendeur

Acheter neuf
EUR 21,45
Autre devise

Ajouter au panier

Frais de port : EUR 3,70
Vers Etats-Unis
Destinations, frais et délais

There are autres exemplaires de ce livre sont disponibles

Afficher tous les résultats pour ce livre