Bonjour!
I've broken my resolution. Again. All I can say is that I have been very, very busy this week. And also the WIFI in my house is so temperamental that I have trouble getting Blogger up and then sometimes it doesn't even publish. To be fair to me, I have been keeping notes in my journal about this book, so I haven't entirely failed.
Today I am doing a review of The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennet. This was released as a movie last November and was recommended to me by a teacher at my school. I liked the idea of it and I thought it would a change from the norm to do a non-fiction review for you guys.
"In 1974, the homeless Miss Shepherd moved her broken-down van into Alan Bennet's garden. Deeply eccentric and stubborn to her bones, Miss Shepherd was not an easy tenant. And Bennet, despite inviting her in the first place, was a reluctant landlord. And yet she lived there for fifteen years. "
This book is incredibly short, only one hundred pages, which to me was not enough to capture the essence of Miss Shepherd and her effect on the community, on Bennet's life and how she really lived. I wouldn't say that this book is gripping, but I definitely enjoyed it and it would be good for a read-a-thon because of how easy it is to read.
The novel is made up of a series of anecdotes in chronological order, often several years apart, of meetings and sightings that Bennet has with Miss Shepherd. In the book you don't actually find out that much about Bennet, which I would've like because he was a main character, and yet there wasn't much depth to him. I suppose if you want to find out about him you can look him up on the internet.
I laughed occasionally whilst reading this. A couple of quotes that I like are "Mrs Thatcher isn't the iron lady, it's me" and "With Miss Shepherd taller was wiser too" which I find funny because that would make me rather stupid even though I have always thought that I was actually quite intelligent for my age. If I may say so myself.
As far as the movie, I haven't seen it yet however I do think that Maggie Smith was a perfect choice to play Miss Shepherd. (For those of you who don't know, Maggie Smith played Professor McGonnagal in Harry Potter. I will be doing a movie review as soon as I can get my hands on it.
I am going to go now because I am going to the cinema with my family to see The Force Awakens. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan but it should still be fun.
Au revoir,
Emile x
