[b:A Life Like Other People's|6876703|A Life Like Other People's|Alan Bennett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348795343l/6876703._SX50_.jpg|7093597]is the usual well written Alan Bennett work, but a bleak portrayal of his mentally unstable mother and her hospitalization while his dad pines silently and obfuscates about the diagnosis. He goes on to recount other troubled family members, such as her sisters, the wars and losses, as he mentions his own growing up and writing plays and making movies trying to conquer his inappropriate writerly curiosity. His characters are vivid in his descriptions: "Hung up in the back bedroom at Gilpin Place, Aunty Kathleen's shop assistant's black frock is slack and shiny, the pads under the arms stained and smelling of long dead 4711.She is well into her forties now, cheerful, toothy but not, it is thought likely to 'get off'." The compact book is enhanced with family photos. I think his family presents far more turmoil than my own, although there is a question of the early death of my paternal grandfather. What did kill him, I wonder. ( )

A LIFE LIKE OTHER PEOPLE'S (2009) is a different kind of memoir, because Alan Bennett becomes a secondary character in this loving, sometimes hilarious, often very moving portrait of his parents, two very shy people who somehow muddled their way through life and raised two sons. Family secrets, including, depression, dementia, odd maiden 'aunties,' and a grandfather's suicide, are revealed piecemeal as Bennett tells his parents' story. His father, a promising violinist, was forced to become a butcher at a young age, and stayed one until he retired. Bennett's mother was plagued by periodic bouts of clinical depression and frequent hospitalizations, which took a toll on his father's health. But the hardest parts to read were about his mother, widowed and finally institutionalized, as she sunk deeper into dementia. She lived into her nineties, her memories gone, and could no longer recognize her own sons, finally losing even her words, reduced to childlike babbling and vacant stares. Profoundly troubled and feeling the usual filial guilt, Bennett wonders about our modern methods of warehousing our old people, using untrained, poorly paid staff to care for them. I found his musings about these things almost heartbreaking.

Alan Bennett is, of course, well known in Britain as a writer for stage, screen and TV. He was also a founding member of the comedy troupe Beyond the Fringe. And while there are many funny things in this "memoir," it is also a very serious look at the vicissitudes of life - and how it all must end. Born in 1934 himself, Bennett was obviously increasingly aware of his own mortality as he researched and set down this family record. Simply written, funny and sad, it's a lovely little book. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

Parents, family, and home are highlighted in this short memoir. The famous humorist and playwright is both moving and funny in this very personal narrative. ( )

A Life Like Other People's is the main story from Bennett's collection Untold Stories, but is long enough to stand up a short memoir in its own right in this publication.

This memoir focuses on Bennett's family, primarily his parents in later life and two of his aunts. It covers some difficult ground, primarily his mother's lifelong struggle against depression and her 15 years of being lost through Alzheimer's, yet is never maudlin or self-pitying.

I loved this book. It was thoroughly 'Great British' - full of dry humour in the darkest of times, and with many warm moments of old-school British daftness around everything from his mother's perception of 'commonness' to her aspiration to join the 'cocktail set' she read about in her women's magazines, despite both her and her husband being teetotallers.

'Your Dad and me have found an alcoholic drink that we really like. It's called bitter lemon'.

Nor was it merely the drink at cocktail parties my mother found mysterious, but the food that was on offer there too.... a sausage had only to be hoisted onto a stick to become for my mother an emblem of impossible sophistication.

4 stars - warmed the cockles of my heart. My first but certainly not my last Bennett read. ( )

Having watched many of Alan Bennett's films I thought it time to read one of his books. An unexpectedly sad but at times funny story, of his parents lives and his connection with them. There is no attempt to cover up any of the struggle they all had with his mother's dementia and how each member of the family coped with her depression, and her many years in and out of various homes and hospitals. You just never know people's stories! ( )