This is one of the books that I find myself wanting to recommend to everyone. It’s a book about books and reading, but unlike others of this genre, which tend to be non-fiction, it's a novel, and yet, it features a very real person, Queen Elizabeth, who is the uncommon reader in the title.
It begins one afternoon when the Queen is out walking her dogs. She stumbles upon a mobile library in the palace grounds. She's never seen it before, so she's curious, she starts talking to the librarian, and then she feels like it would be rude to leave without borrowing a book.
She has no idea what to choose, though. The Queen has never really been a reader. She's read a lot, but most of it was required of her, she's never experienced reading for pleasure. She’s eighty years old, and she’s never been interested in reading or had any other hobbies because she was raised to believe that hobbies tend to exclude. It's her job to take an interest in other people's hobbies and passions but not to have any herself.
She borrows that first book out of a feeling of obligation. It's a novel by Ivy Compton Burnett. She finds it hard going, but she reads it all the way through because, to quote her,
“That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato—one finishes what’s on one’s plate.”
When she goes back to return it, she feels obliged to borrow another book. This time she picks up Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love, which turns out to be a fortunate choice, because it’s very much to her taste, and she enjoys it thoroughly.
Then she reads the sequel, which leads her to a couple of other books that she ends up liking. She begins to experience what all readers know, the way one book takes you to another and then another, opening doors to worlds, characters and ideas of every kind...
She's accompanied in her reading by Norman Seakins, a young man who works in the palace kitchens. She meets him in the mobile library on that first day and she befriends him. She has him promoted to serve as a page boy on her own floor much to the chagrin of the rest of her staff who think he’s not good looking enough to be in that position.
The Queen thinks that Norman is quite the find because unlike most people, he's not intimidated by her, and he doesn’t hesitate to voice his opinion. They talk about the books they're reading and authors that they like, they even read the same book, sometimes, like a tiny book club of two.
There's a scene in the book, when the Queen is up in Balmoral for the summer and she and Norman are reading In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust,
“It was a foul summer, cold, wet and unproductive, the guns grumbling every evening at their paltry bag. But for the Queen (and for Norman) it was an idyll. Seldom can there have been more of a contrast between the world of the book and the place in which it was read, the pair of them engrossed in the sufferings of Swann, the petty vulgarities of Mme Verdurin and the absurdities of Baron de Charlus, while (in the wet butts) on the hills the guns cracked out their empty tattoo and the occasional dead and sodden stag was borne past the window.”
Not everyone is pleased by the Queen’s reading, though. Her absorption in books makes her less willing to bear with the tedium of all the events and ceremonies that she’s supposed to preside over. It makes her less particular about her clothes and her jewellery; it renders her perpetually late. But worst of all, she begins to ask all her visitors what they are reading, and as one of her equerries puts it, “most people aren’t reading anything, the poor dears.”
The more she reads the more the Queen realises how little she knows of literature, and how much catching up she needs to do. She regrets all those times when she’d met writers like T S Elliot, E M Foster, and Walter de la mare, and had nothing to say to them because she hadn’t read anything that they had written.
This book is about her discovery of what it means to be a reader. It’s a interesting premise and Alan Bennett does a wonderful job of bringing it to life. Queen Elizabeth II feels very real, and she comes across as a charming person, intelligent, interesting, witty, and sometimes snarky.
As one reviewer said, we end up hoping that this is the person that she really was. No one knows, of course, but it’s nice to think that this portrait of hers might be close to the truth.
This is a novella; it's a quick read at just a hundred-and-twenty pages. But Alan Bennett has packed a lot of story, character, and detail into those pages. The writing is witty, sharp, and engaging. This is one of those wonderful books that drew me in so completely that the world disappeared for a bit. I've read it twice already, and I know I’ll read it again...