The continuing saga of a mother and her two daughters.Mrs Baines is the middle aged boisterous woman who runs rule of the family business as her invalid husband lies in wait of his demise.The Baines` have two young daughters-Constance ( intelligent and stable)and Sofia (beautiful and flighty).the ideal of the story was to examine how one would perceive "a Mrs Baines" if you were to encounter her on the street or in a cafe.would you see her as an old rude lady?Would you be able to invision the possibility that in her younger days she was as Constance and Sofia are? And ther lies the basis of the story-how does one go from being a beautiful,fun loving girl to a boisterous old lady.Well as the story delves further into their lives we witness everything that happens and therefore shapes their lives.In real life events, whether large or small will determine our next path in life and here we get to see where they end up.
A terrific read for something written in 1908.

I'm certainly not the only person in the world who thinks of this book as a masterpiece. The fact that H.G. Wells, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf all praise this book as being so is one of the reasons I picked it up. In spite of that, I really read it without set expectations.

Briefly, to say what has already been said before, The Old Wives Tale is exactly that - a tale of three women who marry in very different circumstances. Mrs. Baines, the mother, is a life who is only briefly touched upon. However, the seperate lives of the two sisters, Sophia and Constance, are the crux of the book. Each life takes its' turn. We are first told about Constance, then about Sophia, and finally, about their reunion. Constance, whose name is not a coincidence, lives a simple provincial life, and Sophia, whose name also matches her persona, chooses romance and adventure. There is only one villain, and yet, he is perhaps the most powerful and chilling of all villains, Time. His grasping, clutching, suffocating presence is ever felt throughout the book, and looms even larger once that final page is turned. In the end, Sophia and Constance each pay the price for their choices, and the true cost of those choices is left for the reader to decide. As unique as we are, we will each believe something different about Sophia and Constance in the end, and that is precisely the point.

To sum up the experience of The Old Wives Tale, a tale of three women living their lives, and their lives changing them (or perhaps not changing them, is that it is the most honest approach to human psychology I have ever read. The lives we read about, Mrs. Baines, Sophia, Constance, and even those who surround them, could be anyone's. In fact, most of us can find someone in this book we could point to and say "that's me". No character, no matter how brief their exit or entrance into this story, is insignificant. Each person gives us a fresh perspective on the human response to events and to, of course, other humans. The three main characters are presented with sheer, unsympathetic, yet respectful honesty. We are not introduced to inhuman, perfect, idealistic souls in this book. Nor are we looking through the eyes of the wicked. Instead, we are searching the souls of ordinary people and in the end, are left with a question about our own existence.

In fact, it should be a large clue to readers when they see that the title of the fourth section is, What Life Is. It is here that something occurred which I totally unexpected, and it left me quite shaken - in fact, desperate. I found that I had been brought from the comfortable vantage point of observing these fictional lives, which are at times inexplicably amusing and heroic, to a sudden uncomfortable sensation that the characters were real and had turned toward me - the reader - begging the question "What of your life? What have you done with it? What have you accomplished?"

That subtle change of vantage point was shocking, and ingenious. Without criticizing his own creation, the author was able to communicate the importance of living our lives to the fullest without telling us how. This fact alone shows great wisdom. Sophia and Constance experience remarkable things, no more remarkable than most people, but remarkable just the same. Each reacts differently because they are different, and each has a different idea about how to find happiness and how to deal with life's disappointments. Both are frequently of the opinion that they could improve someone else's life, yet have not found real satisfaction in their own. Each makes mistakes, and each perform the heroic. The author will on the same page be blunt about their faults and tender with their plight. He tells their story without judgement, and yet in the end, you feel you have read a very wise judgement on the nature of the human race. Here, reader, you will find no prescription for life, but a question that begs a diagnosis. The author makes it starkly clear that the remedy, or whether a remedy is even required, is up to you.

The Old Wives Tale is not a dark story. It is not a comedy. It is not high adventure or mystery. In fact, it is many of these things put together to create something REAL. And it has shaken me to the core.

I first read this wonderful book many years ago. Recently, I happened to pick it up again (before giving it to my daughter to read), and thought, well, I'll just read a few pages, to see if it's as good as I remember it to be. I stayed up all night rereading it. "The Old Wives' Tale" is a heartbreaker, but superb. As somone else has pointed out, there's a real villain in the book, but the villain isn't human: it's Time. It's difficult for me to imagine anyone reading the last few lines without being touched. I agree with Somerset Maugham: I feel presumptuous even praising it. For those who were "disappointed" with it, may I say, with another commentator, that these people will probably be disappointed with The Day of Judgment.

The story of a man from leaving school to middle age, set in an industrial town in the English midlands at the end of the 19th century. Sounds boring, but it isn't. Slow for the first few chapters, but then I found it unputdownable, you really get interested and want to know what happens. Lots of description of the environment of the time. No sex or violence, written no long after these actual times, so some bits of old fashioned prose. This aside, reminded me of Len Deighton's style of writing. I was a bit doubtful about buying this book, but I'm pleased I did.

This is one of the most dated of Bennett's novels, even though it is his last one. The love story is soooo 1930s, so arch, and so awkward. But the descriptions of the minutiae of the operation of a large luxury hotel, actually the major part of the book, is fascinating.

Inspired by the journals of the Goncourt Brothers, Arnold Bennett began keeping a journal in the mid 1890s and kept it until the late 1920s. If you're interested in events in England and France during that time, you'll find a treasure trove of observations by one of the great English writers of the time. It would have helped if there had been more footnotes to explain who various people are, or to fill us in on events of the day, but that's a minor quibble.

Inspired by the journals of the Goncourt Brothers, Arnold Bennett began keeping a journal in the mid-1890s and kept it until the late 1920s. If you're interested in events in England and France during that period, you'll find a treasure trove of observations by one of the great English writers of the time. It would have helped if there had been more footnotes to explain who various people are, or to fill us in on events of the day, but that's a minor quibble.

This is must-read information for any tenant in the Province of Quebec. Your rights are in peril if you believe that the "system" will automatically work to protect you. Bennett's compilation of facts and anecdotes from advocacy workers in the Montreal rental market will open your eyes to what can happen when the law only works for the wealthy. Bennett's book shows how civil rights of tenants, especially poor tenants, are all too often irrelevant before the Montreal Rental Board, where the prime consideration appears to be catering to landlords by helping them evict tenants and up rents to increase the value of their business investments.
Access to justice, and the law, should not be about boosting anybody's business investment; it should be about mutual obligations in the rental contract.
On a note of personal interest, a subject not mentioned in Bennett's book and certainly worth writing a whole new book, is that the law in Quebec actually denies tenants the right to a private lock on their apartment doors! This results in home invasions, thefts, mail tampering, violence against tenants in the middle of the night by harasser-landlords and their building managers. This violence is particularly addressed toward women, who comprise the largest group of the poor and the biggest population living in low-income housing and slums.
As a woman and a tenant in Montreal, I can tell you the violence I have encountered:
(1) A month after I rented a nice new apartment in 1985, the building was sold to a developer who falsely reported to the City and Police that I was a prostitute, to elicit their harassment of me and force me to move out. The landlord assaulted me in front of witnesses, the courts let him off the hook by finding him guilty but burying the conviction so he could continue his job of driving a kindergarten bus. He came back and smashed my door in with his fist, splintering it from top to bottom while I was trying to move out on the advice of the Sergeant-Detective who had been shocked at the court's decision.
(2) In 1987, shortly after I moved into a nice new apartment and painted it, the janitor told other people in the building (falsely) that I was a prostitute, because I wouldn't sleep with him. I came home to find a 6-inch builder's nail driven through the glass eyehole of my door with a vicious note telling me, "Whore, get out of the building!" (3) In 1983, when I was living in a nice, respectable apartment and working days typing in a law firm, and evenings typing freelance from home, the janitor opened his door with nothing but his underpants on, a smile, and his hands full (!) when I came to pay the rent.
(4) In 1992 after I had sublet my humble nice new apartment to a good tenant who was shortly to move in, I came home from work at 2:00 a.m. (now owning and running a public typing service with a small office) and found my door broken in and the lock changed. I called police, showed them my lease that I carried in my purse, and they obliged the landlord to let me back in. Next morning, a statutory holiday, more police forced their way into my apartment accusing me of being a prostitute and urging me to abandon the premises: they parked a paddy wagon under my windows as a threat, with all the neighbours watching on the street. I filed a Police Ethics complaint, and for my efforts have spent the subsequent years being also harassed by Montreal Police. Meanwhile, my sublettee moved in and was a good tenant for two years.
Over the years, every apartment I have lived in has at some time been "invaded" by landlords and janitors with keys. I have found that men and women landlords both use the defamatory label of "prostitute" to slander a female tenant they want to get rid of to raise the rent; or, if they just have dirty minds and think you couldn't possibly be typing at home for a living with all that traffic and those young good looks. (I have now lost my young good looks.) I have worked for realty owners and know for a fact that some of them keep Polaroid cameras to secretly photograph your possessions to estimate their value in case they decide to evict. In the case of poor people, a candid color photo of your meagre possessions is often used secretly at the Rental Board to "show" the judges that 'obviusly, the apartment has been abandoned, there is nobody living there--' and the landlord then gets permission to put your belongings in the street.
Quebec has a Charter of Rights which states: "1. Every human being has a right to life, and to personal security, inviolability and freedom." And further states: "5. Every person has a right to respect for his private life" and "7. A person's home is inviolable." Unfortunately, it also has a Civil Code which states: "No lock or other device restricting access to a dwelling may be installed or changed without the consent of the lessor and the lessee." and is interpreted to mean that the landlord, his janitor, rental agent, building manager and any Tom Dick or Harry he hires, has a copy of your key.
This directly conflicts with the Quebec Charter of Rights which guarantees the fundamental right of "inviolability" of the home. If you buy a house, the bank does not oblige you to leave a copy of your key to secure your mortgage. Therefore, why should the class of TENANTS, who are lease owners, be treated any differently than home owners? We should not be kept as "livestock" by our landlords, who come and go at will, and whom we are supposed to believe are a superior breed of humans with 100% respect for your privacy and the law, when it is in their own best interests to deprive you of privacy and invade your home at will.

Story of young woman who is given a measure of financial independence by her oppressive father, and how she gradually reaches for some small measure of autonomy. The "Five Towns" are the author's fictionalized version of the corresponding cities of the region in England where the famous potteries & glaziers are.

Frequently, reviewers note the Methodism in this novel -- it does give a look at the everyday lives of Methodism when it was much more controversial (!) than it is today, if it ever was particularly revolutionary in America. I was more struck by the personal circumstances of Anna's plight than her religious questionings, although the latter are definitely imposed on her character by the author.

An interesting attempt by a male author to describe a woman suppressed by her domineering father, by strict moral and religious conventions, and by her own personality.

Described by the prolific author as "my serious novel," _Anna_ is the story of a young woman's struggles to free herself from the oppression of her domineering father. The title character is given a chance to live undreamed-of experiences when she inherits a fortune in properties and business ventures on her 21st birthday. Simultaneously, she finds herself the declared object of affection of one of the town's most desirable men. As her story unfolds, she is attracted to another man, more vulnerable, and must try to resolve many different demands on her sense of duty and her emotions.

Set in the early 1900's, Bennett succeeds in evoking a strong sense of place with his fictionalized Five Towns of the Staffordshire Potteries. Critics have praised his full description of Methodism and Methodist church life of the time, as well. Bennett conveys sympathy for his protagonist and portrays the limitations placed on her for her gender without falling into condescension, concluding, "She had sucked in with her mother's milk the profound truth that a woman's life is always a renunciation, greater or less."

Anna's attempts to expand herself spiritually and personally, and to gain a sense of personal efficacy, make for an interesting read. However, Bennett violates flagrantly the old writer's adage, "Show not tell," as when we are told repeatedly Anna's father is a miser and a tyrant long before we see him saying or doing anything miserly or tyrannical. Further, anyone looking for an intensely psychological novel with thoughts portrayed as stream of consciousness should be aware that Bennett's style descends from a Realist tradition.