If you let bad people push you around into doing bad things because you're too chickenhearted to stand up for yourself, up to the point where you, vulture-like, with zero scruples, and right in front of his face, scope out someone's house that he can no longer afford to live in after his father committed suicide partly because your family contributed to his ruin, with a mind to buy it and live there yourself after he's been driven out, then guess what? YOU TOO ARE A BAD PERSON, and I don't see why I should be bothered about you as a character!!

(Yes, I should allow for nuance &c. and acknowledge that it's not so much that people are "bad people" or "good people" but that people are complex and sometimes do bad things and sometimes do good things, but this novel wasn't exactly rife with nuance, so I don't feel like being generous towards it.)

(Still better than Howards End though!)

EDIT: It's not as if a character has to be likeable or sympathetic in order for me to care about what happens to them or to find a novel worthwhile. But if Bennett wanted to tell a "frog of a character finds herself in a Bunsen burner of moral squalor" story, then he should have been more purposeful about it - or just left that kind of thing to Edith Wharton, who can pull it off much better. Stick to the comedy, bro.

And I'm just over men writing these wilting-lily women characters who don't know their own mind and let men walk all over them and think for them.

ITA
Anna Tellwright vive con il padre e la sorella in una delle cinque città industriali che lavorano l’argilla per farne vasi, piatti etc. Lei è benestante perché la madre lo era e il padre è un vecchio antipatico avaro con molto intuito per gli investimenti.
Al compimento dei suoi 21 anni riceve dal padre la notizia che possiede una rendita abbastanza cospicua a suo nome. Ovviamente sulla carta è ricca, in pratica è sempre il padre che gestisce quel denaro.
La vita di Anna è diciamo abbastanza monotona, le uniche vicende che un po’ movimentano la sua esistenza sono gli incontri con (il buon) Willie Price, Henry Minors e Beatrice Sutton.
Ho molto apprezzato questa storia, il modo di scrivere di Bennett: ho preso nota di qualche frase solo perché mi piaceva come erano scritte.
Sto ancora pensando al personaggio di Anna: un personaggio che è una donna in un periodo storico dove la donna valeva davvero poco, una ragazza che è consapevole di avere un padre ingiusto eppure gli obbedisce perché educata in quel modo, fa anche delle cose solo perché ha dato la sua parola e deve mantenerla (con disappunto del lettore). Infine è anche interessante il rapporto di Anna con la sfera religiosa.
L’unica pecca è che di questo autore sia stato tradotto veramente poco…

ENG
Anna Tellwright lives with her father and sister in one of the five industrial towns that process clay to make pots, dishes, etc. She is well off because her mother was, and her father is an unpleasant old miser who, however, has a lot of insight into investments.
When she turns 21, she receives news from her father that she has a fairly substantial income in her name. Of course, on paper, she is rich; in practice, it is always her father who manages that money.
Anna's life is, let's say, quite monotonous; the only events that somewhat enliven her existence are the encounters she has with Willie Price, Henry Minors, and Beatrice Sutton.
I really enjoyed this story and Bennett's way of writing. I took note of a few sentences just because I liked the way they were written.
I am still thinking about Anna: a character who is a woman in a historical period where women were worth very little; a girl who is aware that she has an unfair father and yet she obeys him because she was brought up that way; she also does things just because she gave her word and has to keep it (to the reader's disappointment).
Also, the relationship Anna has with the religious sphere is interesting.

Read for a Midlands Writers workshop on Bennett (Staffs.) and Mary Webb (Shropshire).

Bennett situates us immediately with Anna's character in the small industrial town in the Midlands, a bright, attractive girl protective of her close sister, liked by the socially respected neighbour, Mrs. Sutton, and friends with her daughter. She often spends time at social evenings with the Suttons, but at home her time is spent serving her miserly and miserable father, Ephraim.

We are already steeped in oppression (women's, class, religious) and hopeful liberation (inheritance, social mentoring, kindness), but these contending forces are worsened when Anna falls for two very different men, yet must maintain her honour. As we watch Anna develop her social conscience through concern and compassion, we see her reject the strict orthodoxy of her father's and prospective husband's religion, and turn to the gentler hearts about her small life.

Bennett's novel is steeped in sense of place and is a fond record of the Potteries emerging out of Victorian England. Despite its stark harshness, Anna loves the Five Towns and its blazing heart of industry. Oppressed by a father stuck on his own rails, her inherent compassion is her and her sister's means of coping with a strict and miserable life, and we warm to her character as we become fond of loathing Ephraim; become contemptuous of Mynors as we become affectionate towards Willie.

At the rearguard of the prevalent Victorian realism soon to be subsumed by modernism, Bennett leaves us with a strange slice of life in what we would normally consider a living hell, yet which, through our heroine, is just as full of love, life and hope as it is the epitome of industrial death. Like his Clayhanger series, while we watch the depredations of life in the filthy surrounding environment with a voyeuristic horror, we are drawn into the lives of his gentle characters while drawing them into our hearts - and in this way, Bennett succeeds in showing us how such as Anna can love this God-forsaken place. It is an almost lost insight into an almost lost world.

On this occasion, judging a book by its cover worked out very well for me. My eye was initially caught by the title – I still have a childish fondness for characters with my name. Then the arresting self-portrait by Gwen John on the cover convinced me to buy it for 50p from a charity shop. I’d maybe half-heard of the title ‘Anna of the Five Towns’, without having any specific preconceptions. In form and content it reminded me of The Rector's Daughter and The Post-Office Girl, both sensitive and beautifully written portraits of young women constrained by circumstance. The titular Anna acts as housekeeper for her wealthy miser of a father and her younger sister. Like The Rector's Daughter, ‘Anna of Five Towns’ has a relatively sparse plot, as it concentrates on Anna’s inner life. I found her a sympathetic and involving protagonist as she deals with her domineering father, her faith, and a suitor. Her calm, caution, and competence are admirable.

Bennett is clearly a writer of skill and the rural Victorian (possibly early Edwardian?) setting is shown in exquisite detail. There’s an extended scene in which Anna tours a pottery works and sees the step by step process of clay becoming a new dinner plate which especially stood out. It may not sound particularly compelling, but I was rather beguiled by the whole thing. The book feels like a window into a previous age, not sparing its darker sides. Indeed, the treatment of indebtedness was very powerful and reminded me of Zola. Although ‘Anna of the Five Towns’ is much gentler than Germinal, one of least gentle books I’ve ever read, it throws rural poverty into stark relief. Anna herself is in a paradoxical situation: her family are landlords and very well-off, while she personally has no access to any of this wealth. Thanks to her father, she has no servants, shabby home-made clothes, and a strict housekeeping budget. This position allows her to feel considerable empathy with tenants unable to pay their rent, although she isn’t an unrealistic paragon. On this theme:

The elaborate mechanism by which capital yields interest without suffering diminution from its original bulk is one of the commonest phenomena of modern life, and one of the least understood. Many capitalists never grasp it, nor experience the slightest curiosity about it until the mechanism through some defect ceases to revolve. Tellwright [Anna’s father] was of these, […] But to Anna, who had some imagination, and whose imagination was stirred by recent events, the arrival of moneys out of space, unearned, unasked, was a disturbing experience, affecting her as a conjuring trick affects a child, whose sensations hesitate between pleasure and apprehension. Practically, Anna could not believe that she was rich; and in fact she was not rich – she was merely a fixed point through which moneys that she was unable to arrest passed with the rapidity of trains.

As well as such commentary, the writing also imbues the settings with a wonderful level of texture. My favourite example was the page-long description of a sideboard, of which this is only a part:

In it was reflected the conscientious labour of generations. It had a soft and assuaged appearance, as though it had never been new and could never have been new. All its corners and edges had long lost the asperities of manufacture, and its smooth surfaces were marked by slight hollows similar in spirit to those worn by the naked feet of pilgrims into the marble steps of a shrine.

I loved ‘Anna of the Five Towns’ and would certainly read something else by Bennett. It was also pleasant to read an older novel for the first time in a little while; I think my fiction choices have been too modern recently. Anna is a protagonist who will linger in my mind long after this brief insight into her life, along with Mary Joyceln and Christine Hoflehner.

WHAT was that ending

I loved this brilliantly engaging book that is also a fascinating social history of 18th century Stoke-on-Trent

A decent little melodrama that picks up once the central story sparks alight. While all the dour Wesleyan types grate somewhat, it does help explain the goings on of our key protagonists. It certainly feels 'real', but only in the most depressing way!

How do I explain why this is so very good? I do not want to wreck the story for you, and thus not too much should be revealed!

This book is good at the beginning, but it gets better and better as you go. At the start, I made guesses about where the story was leading. Some of my guesses proved to be wrong!

Bleak and grim are the appropriate adjectives to be used when describing this book. This may not suit all readers; this is meant as a word of warning. The writing is so effective, so atmospheric and builds with such force that I do not mind the gloom and the imminent feel of tragedy. What is described feels real and honest and “this-is-how-it-would-be”, so for me, perfectly right!

Is it contemporary writing? No, absolutely not.

One must pay attention to every word. Each word is there for a reason; every word counts. Arnold Bennett’s writing is unsentimental. This makes what happens bearable. I like the sparsity of the prose. This forces you to pay attention and makes you think.

The setting of the tale is the late 1800s, middle England, Staffordshire. The towns spoken of in the title go by aliases in the novel. They are in reality Turnstall , Hanley, Burslem, Stoke, Fenton and Longton. You will exclaim—but that is six! Bennett eliminated Fenton because he felt the title sounded better with the word five rather than six. In this way Fenton has come to be known as “the forgotten town”. Anna, of the title, is of Bursley, the alias of Burslem. It is a pottery town.

The book wonderfully describes the town “potteries”, the area, the era, the people and the pervading social climate. How people, women and men and individuals of different social standing, were expected to behave is made clearly evident.

Should one read this story for plot or for character portrayal? For both or for either. Each character is well drawn. This makes you need to know what will happen to them, making plot equally important!

The eponymous Anna is the central character. Her mother is dead. She runs the household for her miserly father, and has a younger sister named Agnes to whom she is as a mother. Anna is of the marrying age and has inherited money from a grandfather. The problem is she does not know a thing about money. She has been taught to obey, to follow instructions, to do as told and certainly not to think. Her father is as much a central character as she is. If you want to read a book having a character on which to vent your anger, read this book. I immensely detested this man. For this reason alone, I rooted for Anna. There is an assortment of other characters, some kind, some pitiable, some a mix of good and bad attributes often circumscribed by their situation. A good spread of characters, giving a realistic picture of townsfolk in the time and geographical area depicted.

I thought a lot about Anna’s inability to feel the sentiments of love and passion. I view this an important element of the story. Why is she this way? Why did she feel as she did about her suitor? Why was she drawn to both him and then Willie? Isn’t it understandable that she should first feel motherly love and that only later could this be transformed into passion toward a mate? Was she even able to recognize love growing up alongside her father? So yes, character portrayal is an essential part of the story.

Caring for the characters as I did, I needed to also know what would happen to them and how the story would end.

The ending. As stated before, you must pay attention. If you do not, you will miss what has happened. Don’t read the next spoiler if you plan on reading the book! Anna’s love for Willie is transformed by a look, by one brief moment of eye-to-eye contact. Also, in one sentence right at the end, readers are told that Willie is found dead at the bottom of an abandoned pit shaft, implying he committed suicide. Of this Anna remains incognizant.  I listened/reread the end several times. Much happens as one approaches the end. The ending is not confusing, but it pushes you stop and think. Is it necessary to reevaluate the conclusions one should draw? Not all is spelled out. I love such endings.

The villagers speak in a brogue that was at times difficult for me to comprehend. I always wanted to understand, so I always listened again. The words are made more difficult by the over-dramatization by the audiobook’s narrator. I hesitate to recommend the audiobook narrated by Peter Joyce. I am fine with enhancing a book’s ambiance through authentically replicating spoken brogue, but only if every word can be clearly deciphered. I often went back and listened several times. A good narration should not demand this. Furthermore, Joyce exaggerates the intonations of the wicked and mean and even some of the elderly, making them sound like witches. Children are not properly intoned either. Only those who want an audiobook read with lots of dramatization could possibly like this narration. In a generous mood, I am willing to give the narration at the most two stars.

I will be reading more by Arnold Bennett. In his youth he lived in the area described here. This shows. My next book by the author will be The Old Wives' Tale.

I really enjoyed this book. Came across this book by accident not knowing anything about the author.
The writing and attention to detail are perfect. I remember how the author writes about the kitchen Anna has. The characters are excellent.
What I will remember from this book is the ending and the last sentence.

"Set in the late Victorian period, Anna of the Five Towns is a brilliantly perceptive novel of provincial life in the Staffordshire Potteries. Arnold Bennett deploys his prodigious literary talent to describe sympathetically the dismal, harsh and occasionally splendid lives of his characters in such a way that they appear interesting, in this the first of his major works to draw on the experiences of his early life. Bennett described Anna of the Five Towns as 'A sermon against parental tyranny', an affliction he was particularly well qualified to write about."
~~back cover

A particularly sparse book about people enduring particularly sparse lives -- either by choice -- from habit -- or because that was the way life was. The author didn't seem to attempt to make any of the characters lovable, but o0nly to portray life in that place and that time -- a time that was harsh and unyielding.

Amazing little book. How is this author not better known?! This story is multilayered; a young woman having her first brush with romance and a change of circumstances; very Jane Austen; but there is more to it.

A subplot is her search for spirituality: " .... irresolute, shamed, and despairing, she tried to pray for guidance, but she could bring no sincerity of appeal into this prayer; it seemed an empty form. Where, indeed, was her religion? She was obliged to acknowledge that the fervor of her aspirations had been steadily cooling for weeks. She was not a whit more a true Christian now than she had been before the revival; it appeared that she was incapable of real religion, possibly one of those souls foreordained to damnation. This admission added to the general sense of futility, and increased her misery. She lay awake for hours..."

The book ends just where it should but I can't help wishing for more chapters. The characters are so real and I became so attached to them that I did not want to let go.

This would make a fantastic story for the BBC to make a movie from.

One of Bennet's best books.

I read it back in the 80's and saw the TV adaptation as well.

The BBC serial, while excellent, didn't reveal (if my memory's right) some of the important plot elements that were revealed in the book itself. Like the ending - whom did Anna really love?

I must get back to reading Bennet again someday. I've read a few of his books and have liked them all.