The Uncommon Reader

By Alan Bennett, 2007

I thought this would be an entertaining light read when I picked it up at a library book sale. It was, and happily it was also a thoughtful look at how reading changes the reader. The Queen, out of curiosity, pops into a library van that had stopped in Windsor, and borrows a book. She discovers that reading for pleasure is quite different from reading for work, or reading the literature that she is expected to know.

I liked the fact that the Queen’s first guide to reading for pleasure chose books mainly because he thought the writer was gay. (Okay, I identify, as I expect does Alan Bennett.) As a starting point to a diversity of interesting writing, it works. And it’s entertaining to imagine how the elevated figures in the Queen’s circle of contacts might react to the thoughts and characters she finds in many books.

Reading, the Queen discovers, can create empathy by allowing you to identify with a range of different characters or at least to see into aspects of their lives that would otherwise be completely unknown. It also becomes unsatisfying and leads an empathetic reader to want to do something about what they see. Reading leads to writing and to action.

This is a nice fantasy, of course. Most people read for an escape from their reality. The ones who are drawn to empathy and action are the empathic and dynamic ones. Their own priorities are reflected in what they see when they read. I don’t know if the current resident of Windsor Castle has the empathy and dynamism that Bennett gives to his Queen, although she clearly has not taken the path that Bennett draws here. In spite of romanticising a feudal institution, though, I enjoyed reading this and imagining the power of literature as Bennett describes it.