Just a couple of stories. The first of a rather meek, middle-aged housewife who rents out rooms discovering the titillating joys of voyeurism at the same time as the couple discover that exhibitionism takes money off the rent! The second of a married gay lad who is having sex with a rather nasty policeman who is also his mother's lover. His stepfather is screwing his wife. With all this infidelity spiced with a bit of blackmail and no-one having any idea of anyone else's peccadillos because they [...]

Not much to say about this one other than that it was a bit of a disappointment: The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson, I have no doubt, was penned to shock more than it was penned to incite thoughts about the perception of quiet, middle-class, older ladies. But Bennett's taking apart of assumptions about quiet older ladies was the much funnier than the completely implausible plot twist. The only time I got a giggle out of this story was at the very end when Mrs Donaldson turns down a proposition becau [...]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because I’ve always wanted to say that I was reading smut.My only familiarity with Alan Bennett’s work was seeing the film The Lady in the Van, which amused me greatly. These two pieces of short fiction, The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson and The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes, were also amusing in a somewhat different way. The author admits to using the title Smut to forestall the critics who were likely to label it as such.Truly not very smutty, these stories are more medit [...]

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February 2012Smut!Smut smut!Smut smut smut smut smut!SMUUUTTTTT!Smut.But I digress (smut!). I've been reading through Alan Bennett's fiction lately (avoiding his plays for some reason, but I should probably read them too), and I couldn't resist a title or a cover like this. Smut! Teacup sex! And two stories:Slightly smutty: To supplement her income, the widowed title character in "The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson" volunteers as a test patient for medical students and rents out her spare room to a [...]

Oooooh Mr Bennett, you are naughty. :-OEros and Thanatos - a definite win for Eros in The Greening of Mrs DonaldsonTruth and Lies and Internet - truth not getting much of a look in at all in The Shielding of Mrs ForbesI fear for Mr Bennett's health: he may well have burst a blood vessel in this effort to shake himself free of his image as Cosy National Treasure. But he really can't shock, no matter how he tries. Not while he uses such delightfully appropriate but gently dated turns of phrase. Ex [...]

Naughty was never so niceI’m a fan of Alan Bennett’s wonderful plays, but my greatest affection is reserved for his charming novella The Uncommon Reader. Coming in at a slight 160 pages, Smut is similar in length, but this book is made up of two brief stories. In content, they have nothing in common with that earlier tale, but they exhibit the same trademark humor and warmth. This is a writer it’s difficult not to like. Therefore, it may be surprising to hear that Mr. Bennett is writing Sm [...]

This book is my answer to all the hype about Fifty Shades of Grey, which I will not read. Ann Patchett recommended Smut on her blog that she started on the website for her new independent book store parnassusbooks. She wrote 'Smut is just dirty enough, it is the perfect balance of dirty and very properly British. It is extremely funny and as neatly pieced together as a Swiss watch'. It was a fun read and I look forward to reading some of his other work.

Two delightful and very Bennettian short stories, each of which is best read in one go. Goodness knows what non-Brits make of them!They are not very smutty and not very plausible, but they are great fun. As with many of his works, a combination of repressed feelings (not all of them sexual) and respectability hide thoughts, feelings and actions that may seem out of character, but are actually fundamental to who the person is. And yet the characters do not, initially at least, realise what they h [...]

Funny book. It is two short stories, both about middle aged women in circumstances or situations that, in former times may have been regarded primly as smutty, something which this book is not. It is witty and clever, light hearted, and gently pokes fun at society's preoccupations with "how things look". [from 'The Shielding of Mrs Forbes'] “In the years since he was born her sights had risen and Graham was not nearly the classy name she’d once thought. She wished now that she could get rid [...]

Disinvolte CochonneriesUn Bennet briosamente perfido Una veloce lettura , frizzantecon un po' di maliziosa leggerezza Un assaggio dei coniugi Forbes all'inattesa notizia dell'imminente matrimonio del loro unico figlio ecco la signora Forbes :)« Comunque, Edward,guardiamo ai fatti. Lui è bellissimo, lei no. Il matrimonio è un sodalizio: i belli si sposano tra di loro, e tutti gli altri raccattano gli avanzi».«C’è anche l’amore» replicò Mr Forbes senza convinzione.«Certo che c’è» [...]

What a disappointment! If I hadn't read any other Alan Bennett, this would probably have put me off him for good! The first story had its moments; particularly when the main character, Mrs Donaldson, is doing her "turn" at the hospital, but those were the rare moments of humanity in what was ultimately a totally unbelievable piece of nonsense.I don't consider myself a prude; documentaries about "adult babies" or "pony fetishes" don't shock me like they do my straight sister and brother-in-law. I [...]

Although the two stories in this book aren't really all that smutty they are rather humorous and enjoyable and show Bennett skill as a writer and ability to create believable and strangely loveable characters really well. The first story tells of Mrs Donaldson, a widow in her mid-fifties as she tries to make ends meet and finds herself with a couple of lodgers who open her eyes to the pleasures of life that she has been missing out on, even if he doesn't get to join in completely. The second tel [...]

Bennet is always a delight. He's one of those authors that can slip the most powerful pathos and profundity in the seemingly mundane. Even without being his greatest works, the two stories in Smut are a joy to read contain enough nuggets of classic Bennet observations to be well worth the read. I read some criticisms that for a book called Smut, the stories really were quite tame. I think that misses the point entirely, and misses what the word smut actually means. Smut isn’t full on outrageou [...]

In The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson, an average English widow takes in two lodgers, a young couple. When they can't pay the rent, they offer her another, very different type of payment. Outside the home, she volunteers as a "sick" person for medical residents, becoming quite adept at donning any disease or disorder. She's blooming in a way, and escaping her "true" self, whoever that is.In The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes, her only beloved child, Graham, perfect in looks and smarts, hides a secret life [...]

Not as salacious as the title suggests but it did help me stay awake on the plane. Really lovely writing though I still have trouble imagining such seemingly milquetoast people have such racy secret lives. Isn't everyone nice and boring and non-duplicitous like me?

Smut: Stories Imagine, if you will, that the cast of Monte Python got together and wrote dirty little stories. Only they wrote them in a somewhat serious mode – of course, being Monte Python they would need to be full of tongue in cheek, satirical and cynical humor that shined a mirror back at the inanities of real life and real people and society in general.Alan Bennett is one of Britain's most beloved playwrights, screenwriters, actors and authors. Oxford educated , he studied history and pe [...]

According to the Urban Dictionary, smut translates to highly developed stories with love lines and other things that appeal to women, with a lot of sexually explicit scenes. By that definition, is Alan Bennett’s latest novel truly about smut?The ambiguous answer: yes but not really. Smut really tackles the theme of how those of us, living within narrow boundaries of social convention, break free from conforming to appearances. The result is entertaining, amusingly quirky British humor at its b [...]

“Smut: two unseemly stories” is, as the title suggests, an omnibus of two short stories by English author and actor, Alan Bennett. The first story is The Greening of Mrs Donaldson. Mrs Donaldson, recently widowed, finds herself a little short on cash and decides to take a student couple as lodgers. When they find themselves unable to pay the rent, they come to a novel arrangement with their landlady. Mrs Donaldson’s other source of income is working as a Simulated Patient in medical studen [...]

Just finished "Smut". Get a kick out of the title--nothing like going to my local library, where a copy of the book was being held for me behind a busy counter, and being asked for the title by a busy assistant in front of a line of people (I gave him the author's name!). Here it is 2012, my community's library is active, modern, and well-run, and I balked at calling out "Smut!" in front of eight people!Anyway, did enjoy this. It's the first thing I've read by Bennett. Although, overall, I was s [...]

Absolutely brilliant, 2 short stories read by the author, impeccable.One a story of a middle-aged land lady who is paid by her student tenants by being an observer to their love-making.The other about a young engaged man and his attraction to another man and his love for his fiancee (with a nagging Mother thrown in).Both told with THAT wit that only Alan Bennett can write. So subtle but outrageous you can't help but laugh-out-loud. You know you have heard what he has said, but it takes a while f [...]

Smut, is a collection of two novella-like short stories: ‘The Greening of Mrs Donaldson’ and ‘The Shielding of Mrs Forbes’.The first story is about a widow, Mrs Donaldson, who works part time in a university hospital as a patient (acting out symptoms) for students to figure out as part of their studies. She also rents out a room in her house to a student couple and when they fall behind in their rent, they approach her with the proposition to let her watch them having intercourse. She ag [...]

I fell in love with Bennett's The History Boys after the 50 Years of the National Theatre on the BBC showed about 5 minutes of it. After that I was hooked.Unseemly: not proper or appropriate.'Smut' contains two short stories about, unsurprisingly, sex. From the title you can identify that those entwined within the stories of sex confront it in a somewhat old-fashioned sense. Sex is either very, very good or quite, quite bad.In the first, a middle-aged woman discovers enjoyment in watching youngs [...]

Smut is an evocative word, of something dirty; it’s a word that invokes cringe. I was surprised to learn that smut is a black colloidal substance consisting of amorphous carbon and used to make pigments and ink; it also refers to a destructive disease of cereal grasses caused by a fungi (Ustilaginales) that produces black powdery masses of spores; I guess that is the “dirty” connotation. The cringe comes from it being an offensive or indecent word or phrase. Some might argue that the title [...]

Alan Bennett's latest book explores sexuality in suburbia with a 55 year old widower who becomes a peeping tom landlady in lieu of rent to her exhibitionist lodgers, and a secretly gay banker who gets blackmailed by one of his lovers. The title "Smut" and the word "unseemly" both give the wrong idea about the stories - they might have seemed transgressive in years past but watching people have sex and being gay aren't really taboo any more. The quaint terminology employed by Bennett is reflectiv [...]

Just a few days after starting this book, I heard a caller on a podcast introduce himself as someone who has the same job as one of Bennett's main characters: someone who pretends to be a patient for doctors to practice on. A few days *before* starting this book, I'd never even heard of such work; in fact, when I started "Smut," I wondered whether Bennett had made the whole idea up.So far the writing is funny and the story is engagingly bizarre. Interested to see where things go from here.--Just [...]

I started this book at Alewife, and was laughing out loud by Kendall. At my client's office, I casually tried to hide the title while I snuck in a read in the lobby. Smut! What would he think? This was an easy read with some smut and humor mixed in. The first section is about a window who performs as a patient for medical students and rents out an extra room in her house. Smut happens! The second story is of a son trying to live up to his mother's expectations.The book was not without flaws. The [...]

Two wry yet poignant novellas, one of which was published in the LRB, one brand new. Weird to see Alan Bennett characters using the internet and mobile phones, when AB himself famously has no computer - he uses a manual typewriter bought from a Bradford charity shop Enjoyed both, though they are more of the same sort of thing: an older lady discovers an unlikely new lease of life from a sexual 'arrangement' with her tenants to pay the rent, while another older lady is kept from knowing the truth [...]

[A copy of this book was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review]3.5 stars.Smut! What a fantastic word.In these two stories, ‘The Greening of Mrs Donaldson’ and ‘The Shielding of Mrs Forbes’ we experience a lot of smutty sex; straight sex, gay sex, extramarital sex, cyber-sex, sex in company, sex that’s paid for, sex that’s paying for something – all reined back by a typically British tameness that stops it being trashy and allows it to be… smu [...]

Good little book of two "unseemly" stories. Very proper unseemly stories--though neither is likely to be added to a high school reading list. The first story - "The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson" - is better - the targets (prudishness, pigeonholing) are still there, but it's also a stronger celebration of being alive. The second story is simpler, less thought out; more a basic mockery of expected behavior. They are both funny, but the first is as good or better than some of the "Talking Heads" play [...]