A review by ipb1
The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett

5.0

Virginia Woolf critically lambasted him, which should have attracted me to his work earlier, but nonetheless this is my first Arnold Bennett novel, and what a brilliant novel it is. In brief it is the lives of two sisters, pretty much from cradle to grave. One mundane, parochial and domestic. The other in Paris during the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris commune. If that latter half sounds a bit rich for your blood don't worry - those events happen mostly 'off-stage' and we are more concerned with the equally mundane and domestic. On reflection it seems a hard sell, plot-wise, but somehow it works wonderfully well, fully engaging you in these two lives. I can't wait to read more Bennett, which I guess is the highest praise you can give an author.