I'm a sucker for stories about women's daily lives - from other: time periods, parts of the world, and/or facets of society. I'm kicking myself for not marking passages but Bennett has a way of describing a room, an object, a view, an interaction while actually telling you what he thinks about humans and the world we inhabit and have largely created. For what it's worth, I believe she chose the right man (even though she didn't actually consider her other option) - Anna spared her sister further from her father, the miser (delightful title). #drunkreview ( )

Early 20th century. After the Trollope book, this is an interesting take on capitalism and class. Also the story of the miser--which is interesting in the context of "Our Mutual Friend" which I'm also reading. Bennett is so much more intense about the issues of class and socialism which come into view in the late Victorian and early 20th century. Also mixes this in with an approach to methodism, religion, and also the potteries. This is a fine book and much of the twentieth rather than the 19th century. (Listened audiobook.) ( )

The books of Arnold Bennett seems curiously neglected these days. I've recently read 'The Card' which I love. In 'Anne Of The Five Towns' Bennett has produced a true tale of pathos. Anne is the eldest daughter of miser Tellwright. On her twenty-first birthday her father hands tells her that she is a rich woman. However her father still firmly controls this legacy so that she cannot do as she wishes with her life. Her life is crossed by two men,one rich and self-assured and the other weak and helpless.She marries the one although she really loves the other. ( )

I loved this book. It had everything, men, moods and money (and maybe murder), very melodramatic. What more do you want in a Victorian potboiler? It would make a wonderful Hollywood-style movie. Plenty of opportunity for some thin, big-eyed, dark-haired beauty to lean out of a window and emote, panting fetchingly as her bosom heaves up and down and her eyes fill with glycerine tears. It wouldn't be able to be true to life because if there any two English accents I find difficult to understand, its the Black Country first and Potteries second, and this is the Potteries. I'm British myself, so Lord knows what an international audience would make of them. ( )

I loved this novel because, as I heard somewhere, it raised the ordinary to extraordinary.
And that's exactly what makes this a thrilling novel. Nothing exceptional goes on, just what life for a young woman in an industrial village at the end of the XIX century might have been like. Unadorned and real.

Anna is an ordinary girl, who leads a simple existence with her tyrannical father and her younger half sister. She performs her duties without complaint, without any fuss or expectations. She is humble and austere and shy and not sure of what religion or love means, even though society imposes them on her.
When she turns 21, her oppressive father announces that she 's come into a great inheritance left to her from her deceased mother which makes her a wealthy and eligible woman. But that doesn't change anything, she is still depending on her miserly father.
Although Anna consents into everything imposed to her, she kind of starts making her own decisions to thread her future. While receiving constant attention from Henry Mynors, a young promising businessman, who wants to marry her, she can't help thinking of poor and humble Willie Prince, one of her tenants who is in deep debt. Her first own decision might change life as she had known it.

The end of the story left me breathless, so many emotions in such a few lines, without great passion, only with open sincerity, only with the pouring hearts of two people who are destined not to be together, and their cold acceptance to take life as it is. Hard, unfair and sad.

Great first experience of Bennett's writing. I'll read more by him definitely! ( )