Smut

British playwright and memoirist Alan Bennett is known for artfully capturing the lives of his humdrum characters while revealing the turmoil that lurks just below their composed surfaces. His latest book, Smut, continues this approach with two novellas that look at some of the limits and lies of self-perception. In "The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson," the protagonist finds her life—and her purse—uncomfortably empty after her husband's death, and decides to take in a young couple as boarders. Through them, she gets a job working as a Simulated Patient, an amateur actor with a given set of symptoms who helps doctors with their training. By playing out her various roles, Mrs. D. gains access to aspects of herself that were off limits while she was married. But her situation quickly becomes more complicated when her boarders, perpetually short of rent, propose a sexual bartering system that she can't seem to say no to. Thanks to Bennett's linguistic mastery and wit, the story has the pacing of a smart screwball comedy; none of it feels forced or insulting and all of it goes down like good medicine. However, the second story, "The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes," in which Graham Forbes, a gay man, marries Betty Green because she has more money in stocks than she seems to realize, lacks the freshness and unexpected humor of the first, and the story's complicated double-crossings result in a joyless tangle. There's much to love for Bennett fans in Smut, but it might not be the best place to start for someone new to his considerable talents.