A review by emjay2021
Smut: Two Unseemly Stories by Alan Bennett

4.0

After my great enjoyment of The Uncommon Reader, I decided I really needed to track down some more Alan Bennett. And Smut happened to be available through Audible, so I decided to spend my credit on it. Normally I am very wary of authors reading their own work (for example, someone needs to tell Barbara Kingsolver that she's a really good author but she needs to leave the audio narration to a professional). However, Alan Bennett does a great job on this one. Perhaps it's his mild, unexcitable narration juxtaposed with the actual subject of the stories that makes it so hilarious. Anyway, I found these two stories very amusing (and not all that smutty, actually, though the first one is more explicit than the first). I enjoyed them both, but thought the second one ("The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes") was a bit better than the first ("The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson"). If possible, I'd suggest you avoid finding out too much about the stories before reading--I think they're better that way. I went into them both mostly blind (though I did read a few non-spoilery reviews that gave few details aside from saying "They're not really that smutty") and I think it enhanced my appreciation of them.

I think I sense more Alan Bennett in my future reading lists!