FIRST LINE REVIEW: "Those two girls, Constance and Sophia Baines, paid no heed to the manifold interest of their situation, of which, indeed, they had never been conscious." Such a telling opening line for a beautifully rich, lovingly told history of the Baines sisters -- two women who never really seemed to be in tune with their world/situation. Bennett has crafted an epic tale that is funny, heart-breaking and quite profound in it's deep understanding of humanity. Highly recommended!

I've reflected on the sweep of this book long after I finished reading it. Bennett captures the poignant, the marvellous, and the tedious in the lives of these two sisters. Followed from youth and beauty to old age and infirmity, we get to see how their very different choices made early on unfold through the years.

Great book; subtle, funny, poignant, wise. Don't know why I bother with modern novels.

The Old Wives' Tale Arnold Bennett
This book is a masterpiece of the art of story telling. Its a simple linear narrative but with amazing character study. How well Mr Bennett understood human nature! The book is interesting, amusing, sad and very touching..its excellent and highly recommended.

I've just finished The Old Wives Tale and absolutely loved it. His characters are so rich with personality, he writes with humour and it's so easy to read. I got totally engrossed in the tale which follows the lives of two sister in the Potteries. It took me a little while to get into it and then I was grabbing the book at every opportunity to immerse myself in this world.

I found the introduction really interesting. Apparently Virginia Woolf didn't rate AB at all, but he was a very popular and prolific writer of the the time. I think he became well off from his writing too. I'm amazed that he is not well known now. It's like stepping back in time and I love the language. There's a little quirk in the use of the word there in his writing, which must have been something from that time. I find he overuses exclamation marks, but then so do I and perhaps I noticed it for that reason. I often have to go back and delete them when I write anything.

The Old Wives' Tale is No. 87 on The Modern Library's list of 100 Best Novels, which I am slowly making my way through from 100 to 1. At 615 pages, this is one of the longer ones I've read on this list.

The book centers on two sisters, Constance and Sofia, following them from their youth in the 1860s in what is now Stoke-on-Trent, England (an area known for its pottery making), through their deaths in the early 1900s. This is a realistic novel, depicting life in Victorian England and Paris through the lens of these two sisters and the choices they make. I was most impressed by how well Bennett wrote from the female perspective and saw myself in both of these characters. (Although I didn't appreciate his depiction of women in their 40s as old and decrepit. Different time, I suppose.)

Though this novel was written over 100 years ago, there were many instances where I saw the truth of the old adage, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." There is a rather comical scene, for instance, when Constance is having some renovations done to her house and the construction crew comes, makes a mess and then disappears for several weeks. Repeatedly.

While I was skeptical, I ended up enjoying this novel. There was just enough action peppered into the day-to-day doings to keep the pages turning. It was a lovely window into a time long past, but thanks to human nature, altogether not too different from our own.

Apparently reviewers of the time called this book "honest but dull." I can't help agreeing. It was, in no more words than that, honest, but exceptionally dull. The first part, especially, was so incredibly tedious, in both its writing and its plot, that I was ready to give the book one star and chuck it.

Luckily for my sanity the next three parts actually picked up - or maybe I got used to the tedium - and became somewhat more bearable to read, putting the book in the realm of 'inoffensive'.

I think that my problem with this book's two protagonists was not a lack of events, but a lack of personality. Sophia's "individuality" was more of an informed ability; it was mentioned an awful lot, and had consequences for the story, but I never saw it with my own two eyes. Constance didn't even have the author reminding me every two minutes how much of a personality she is.

Essentially, in terms of the characters, the book fails in the issue of 'show, don't tell'. It tells quite a bit, but shows relatively little. It probably provides a fairly accurate description of the way women behaved and perhaps thought - though who could say? - at the time the book was written, but it's not really a surprise that nowadays it is relatively obscure. it didn't seem to age well.

This is a witty, entertaining yet melancholy tale that traces the life of two Englishwomen from their girlhood in the 1860s until about 1907, when Bennett started drafting the novel. Bennett got the idea for writing the book in 1903 when, observing a fairly ridiculous acting and looking stout elderly woman dining at a restaurant. Bennett thought:
“there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that every stout aging woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youth in her form and movements and in her mind. And the fact that the change from the young girl to the stout aging woman is made up of an infinitesimal number of infinitesimal changes, each unperceived by her, only intensifies the pathos.”
Bennett thought this a good idea for a novel but set it aside until he reread Guy de Maupassant’s “Un Vie” which traces the entire life of a woman, and decided to do an English version but, being English, had to “go one better” and trace the lives of two women; two sisters Constance and Sophia Baines. Constance is the one Bennett modeled on his 1903 restauranter, but intended to create a more sympathetic woman than that ‘ridiculous’ person, and one who would pass unnoticed in a crowd. Sophia he says he created out of his own bravado, a trait which is reflected in Sophia’s character. I thought Bennett was quite successful in fulfilling his intent when creating the characters of Constance and Sophia.
Bennett has the sisters start their lives sometime between 1846 and 1849 and the story picks up with them as teenage girls in 1864, living in a residence adjacent and over the Baines family’s store on St. Luke’s Square in Bursley, England, one of the five towns collectively referred to as the Potteries, being the area in central England where British earthenware is made, with entities such as Wedgwood, Spode and Royal Doulton. These five towns, later joined by a sixth, ended up being amalgamated in 1910 into a city known as Stoke–on–Trent.
I won’t go into the story details except to say that while most of it is set in the family home in Bursley, the book isn’t static in locale. While Constance indeed lives a life in Bursley as a woman “who would pass unnoticed in a crowd,” Sophia has a more adventurous life, especially during an eventful period in Paris history. Sophia’s life, while not always leading to positive outcomes, befits Sophia’s strong-willed, intelligent, adventurous yet often stubborn and judgmental character.
Constance’s story is less exciting than Sophia’s, but it contains quite meaningful and very perceptive moments and insights into her character and, through her interactions with them, into the characters of her family members, servants, employees and some of the quirky denizens of Bursley. Constance may have a more parochial character befitting her life in a more parochial setting, but her story is still interesting.
While making such vivid and realistic depictions of the sisters’ Bursley and Paris lives, Bennett sprinkles into it various doses of humor and wit, both when commenting on his characters’ traits, thoughts and actions and when making his sharply satirical societal observations. These comments and observations greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the book, though I could see where some might view them as unwelcome interruptions of the pathos building in some serious scenes.
And, yes, pathos – to borrow Bennett’s own term - is the dominating emotion evoked in this novel and Bennett, despite his wit and satirical bent, is extremely talented at presenting it. Bennett really delves inside the personalities of these two sisters; their thoughts, the rationale for the thoughts, especially exploring their thoughts during interpersonal interactions. His is quite the thorough character study of these two flawed and sympathetic sisters from a 19th century central England town.
I was quite moved by their story. The novel touched many of my emotions; it made me smile, worry, laugh, be teary-eyed and be heart-broken, all while being enlightened with knowledge and insights into the English and French people and social history of the time. I couldn’t ask for much more out of a classic novel.
This is a 5-star novel, rare for me to give to a Victorian novel, but then this is actually a 20th Century Edwardian novel rather than a Victorian one. It made for a superbly rewarding and compelling read. Last night, after finding myself unable to sleep, I arose at 3:00 a.m. and read the last 80 pages to finish the book by breakfast. I think my inability to sleep was due to my desire to finish the book as I had read part of a chapter before going to bed in the first place. Whatever the reason for my bout of insomnia, I’m very glad I got up to read the book. Finishing the book during a period of change from darkness to sunrise to light likely enhanced the “pathos” of the overall reading experience.
(As a bonus, by reading this in a GR group read, I learned that in the 19th century, Sophia, was pronounced “So-feye-a” rather than “So-fee-a,” so similar to the pronunciation of Maria in "They Call the Wind Maria" from the musical Paint Your Wagon).

What did I like about this book? It wasn't really exciting, or novel, nor were the characters that compelling - and yet, it was thoroughly good. The preface helped me to like it, I admit. Bennett writes about seeing two older women in a restaurant and feeling curious about what made them so different and yet brought them to the same place - and wanting for a long time to explore that idea in his writing. So this novel is really focused on the idea that small everyday choices build upon each other and that it is these, more than even the seemingly larger decisions of life, that form our character and even our appearance, and determine where we end up and how. It was this theory that held me throughout the book, and that I could relate to - in fact, I feel as if I have known Constance and Sophia - I have witnessed these kind of lives. And in that sense this book felt contemporary - it is the kind of thing that happens every day. It was about details, about mundane events, and yet, it was not boring or bleak. I respect Bennett's skill to be able to have Constance look at her sister's life and comment that it was largely about nothing (when her own life was equally so, although she took a different path)- to be able to acknowledge that without being overcome by it? Really great writing. Now if only it had been more exciting, I would have given it 5 stars.

BLURB

"Every stout, ageing woman is not grotesque -- far from it! -- but there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that that every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youth in her form and her movements and in her mind. And the fact that the change from the young girl to the stout ageing woman is made up of an infinite number of infinitesimal changes, each unperceived by her, only intensifies the pathos. It was at (the) instant (of this observation) that I was visited by the idea of writing the book which ultimately became The Old Wives' Tale." So writes Arnold Bennett in the preface to his masterpiece of realistic fiction, a book that follows the lives of two sisters, Constance and Sophia, from simple days in mid-Victorian England through the chaos and tumult of the modern age. Along the way, a novel is built, detail by rich detail, that rivals the great realistic works of Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Maupassant.

I don't really know what I feel after the reading this book, apart from exhausted and sad. But digging deeper into the reason behind my feelings, I can only conclude that the realities of the two sisters were nothing really different than what is happening to everyone in life.

“Scars are just another kind of memory.” ― M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans

Instead of hiding behind social etiquette and good manners, the story, published in 1908, is told with blatant honesty, coupled with a subtle dry sense of humor and a profound knowledge of humanity. The historical aspects of events which were either unknown or peculiar, added a deeper nuance to the book. I really enjoyed it.

I found a great audiobook version on Youtube and decided to finish the story that way since I probably would have put it down. It was really too slow and too boring. But the deeper I progressed into the narrative, the more I began to enjoy this saga about two sisters who made different choices in their lives and had to do the best they could. They took responsibility with the tools available to them: pride, a sense of honor, resilience and endurance.

I think it is more the story of life as we know it, than it is about the two sisters alone. It is like asking a few people to write down their life stories and then choose two mundane, probably boring lives, to highlight our own journeys for us all. Or it can also be the gossip stories about neighbors from the cradle to the grave, and how we react to it.

Picturesque, detailed, touching. For me the value lies in the time period it was written and the reminder it is of lives that was lived differently from our own and what we could learn from the experience. I loved it. A great classic.

This book was great even though it took me forever to get through. It’s set in Bursley, a town (not very) loosely based on a real one. The book is the story of two sisters born in Bursley, one who is conventional and gets married to her father’s shop assistant and stays in Bursley, and the other who runs away with a fast-talking, attractive salesman who in the end, of course, does her wrong. It’s just the story of their lives, but, as with all of these Top 100 novels, it’s about humans being humans, which is validating because it lets the reader know that, yup, all of this is normal.

I read this book because it was compared to Somerset Maughm's novels, which focus on the journey of a young protagonist from childhood into adulthood. However, this book was only comparble to Maughm in it's plot, which depicted the growth of to sisters from adolesence into old age. The characters were poorly invented and lacked substantial depth. The settings were simple and uninteresting as were the interactions between the characters.