'Untold Stories'

I'm often banging on about books and the rich incisive effect they can have on us.
It might be the subject matter, something or somewhere we have been, the writers style is important, not too flowery but sufficiently brisk  to keep the story flowing and, most of all, written in a way that is believable.
Fiction, as the name implies draws us in to a made up world of character development. We become engrossed in what happens next, the reality links such as where the action is taking place, being real and known, it enhances our belief in the plot.   
Autobiographical books lean on the subtle connections we make with the authors life of his/her revelations about events in their lives which in some way mirror ones own. I have been rereading Alan Bennett's 'Untold Stories'. The book is a delight. Coming from Yorkshire I love the droll way he uses colloquialisms that are engrained in my memory and which give so much grounding to his description of people and places. The CDs,  his soliloquy of characters and situations which ordinary people come up against in  life's journey are brilliant and for me are enhanced by the slow unfurling of the story told in the rather sad flat vowel accent which is his genuine way of speaking. The stories have a basis, the authors past and it is in this book 'Untold Stories' that we explore his childhood, his relationships and most of all the effect his family, his mother and father had on him. His parents shy and withdrawn when outside the comfort zone of their home lived a constrained existences unable to come to terms with society at large as it mutated away from the values they thought proper, his mother becomes fixated and paranoid suffering long bouts of depression taking turns in various mental hospitals in an attempt  to bring her back on an even keel. His father diligent to a fault in his duty, unable to make any headway with his wife but resolute in his love and affection. Bennett tells the story from the position of a son who has nurtured the same demons, of feeling out of kilter with society at large when a boy but had had great success in London's theatre land and was at a loss to cope in any meaningful way with the real life drama being played out by his Mom and Dad in Yorkshire.
Books are a mirror to our own lives and we see so much of ourselves in the writings of others !!                

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