Anna of the Five Towns (Dodo Press) (Paperback)

from startingover

Arnold Bennett has never been particularly fashionable; Virginia Woolf hadn't much time for him (the feeling was mutual) and French critic George Lafourcade describes Anna of the Five Towns as tending to 'dullness complete and unrelieved'. DH Lawrence also responded negatively to the novel, but t...

from Luli81

I loved this novel because, as I heard somewhere, it raised the ordinary to extraordinary. And that's exactly what makes this a thrilling novel. Nothing exceptional goes on, just what life for a young woman in an industrial village at the end of the XIX century might have been like. Unadorned and...

from startingover

Arnold Bennett has never been particularly fashionable; Virginia Woolf hadn't much time for him (the feeling was mutual) and French critic George Lafourcade describes Anna of the Five Towns as tending to 'dullness complete and unrelieved'. DH Lawrence also responded negatively to the novel, but t...

from dandelionroots

I'm a sucker for stories about women's daily lives - from other: time periods, parts of the world, and/or facets of society. I'm kicking myself for not marking passages but Bennett has a way of describing a room, an object, a view, an interaction while actually telling you what he thinks about hu...

from idiotgirl

Early 20th century. After the Trollope book, this is an interesting take on capitalism and class. Also the story of the miser--which is interesting in the context of "Our Mutual Friend" which I'm also reading. Bennett is so much more intense about the issues of class and socialism which come into...