Maybe the best of the whole Clayhanger trilogy: Edwin and Hilda are now an established married couple. Edwin's business is progressing; Hilda's son (by her bigamous first marriage) is an adolescent.
But the small but constant annoyances of marriage are ever present. Bennett does an ASTONISHINGLY good job at getting into the minds and feelings of two individuals, yoked together for better or worse.
Superb. ( )

This is the third book in the Clayhanger series, and my favorite. In These Twain, the somewhat-starcrossed lovers from the first two books, Edwin and Hilda Clayhanger, embark on married life. They fight a lot. I read this book in the 1990s and haven’t re-read it, but what I remember most vividly are the descriptions of how angry they get at each other. Edwin Clayhanger thinks how he’d like to strangle Hilda, but then he goes for a walk and after a while he calms down, and when he comes home, he loves her again. At that time I was dating someone who made me really angry fairly often, and I thought These Twain was incredibly realistic. Bennett’s World-War-I-themed book (The Roll-Call) will come up in 1918, and is the last in the Clayhanger series. ( )

I'm up to about chapter 3 and I just don't know if I can take more of Hilda and Edwin. Giving it a break and maybe some more later.

This was my least favourite of the trilogy I think. I just found the constant changes of heart from both Edwin and Hilda a bit tiresome, and the endless internal monologues they have without actually saying anything out loud to each other. ( )

back cover: 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars From the back cover of this novel..., 20 Aug 2006
By Angel Silver "Angel" (England) - See all my reviews

"The final volume in the Clayhanger trilogy, following CLAY-HANGER and HILDA LESSWAYS. In many ways this is the most accomplished of the three novels, for Bennett, drawing together the threads of his trilogy, presents already-established personalities in confrontation. Hilda is now married to Edwin Clay-Hanger and the two, with Hilda's son by her disastrous `marriage' to George Cannon, are living in Bursley. As they cope with immediate tensions and with old wounds they are forced continually to reassess their relationship. Bennett is at his best here, recreating a society and its characters -- Auntie Hamps and Tertius Ingpen among them -- and achieving a remarkably subtle and biting portrait of a marriage."