I try hard to avoid heavy, expensive hardback books but a round, wooden table artfully styled with small, beautifully produced hardbacks, well, that’s another matter … and very hard to resist.
Such a table was near the checkout in Daunts the other day and just as so many people would in indulge in chocolates as they queued at the cash desk, so I picked up a copy of Killing Time by Alan Bennett as I waited to pay for my one, now two books.
I had no idea what it was about but I would always trust Bennett’s writing. It is in fact a slightly quixotic tale set in a council run care home. You may now begin to see where the title comes from and the very Bennett-esque play on words. The book is slender, a little over 100 pages, and as I started to read a thought crossed my mind that this was going to be depressing. A few pages later I realised I was quite wrong. As long as you can accept that we are all going to die eventually and that life will certainly change as we age, then you will be able to see and enjoy the humour, so cleverly layered in this story:
‘Violet? She’ll be having a little lie-down,’ said Mrs McBryde. ‘She likes to give her pacemaker a rest. I’ll rout her out.’
What we are offered here is the result of Alan Bennett’s acute observation and his skill at seeing the wry, and very dry, essential funniness in the human condition.
It is covid times in this story and the sudden absence and hospitalisation of the manager of the home, Mrs McBryde herself, becomes a time of liberation for the inmates (maybe that’s not quite the right term to use…or maybe it is!). I could go as far as to say there was a revolution, bloodless of course, that leads to the unforeseen and satisfying ending of the tale. Oh my goodness, Alan Bennett had fun writing this and I indeed had fun reading it.