The Clothes They Stood Up In

Added The Clothes They Stood Up In to my book recommendations list.

[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com. My old book review webpage is no longer up, but I’ve pasted the text of my review below.]

On the way home for lunch one day I stopped at a small bookstore looking to find something pleasant to read while munching. I found this short book and it is every bit as delightful as I had hoped my find would be. A not-very-interesting middle-aged English couple come home from the opera one night to find that someone has robbed their flat, not just of the valuables but of everything, right down to the toilet paper roll and its holder. They have lived comfortably in this flat for thirty years, and now that it is completely bereft, they have a decision to make: try to rebuild, or start over? Their responses take them in new and interesting directions.

Classification: Since this book is so short it is easily readable in an afternoon (I finished it in an hour, during lunch), and if you haven’t too much else to do that afternoon you will happily spend the rest of it chewing over the events in the story. It is an easy book to get lost in, but not so long that you will have trouble finding your way out again. I highly recommend it. It is a pleasure to read. When finished you sigh deeply and smile, and suppress an urge to go back to the beginning and read it all over again.