The book is split up into two sections as designated by the title, with the first section (most of the book) acting as a impersonal lens onto the Nottingham society while the second section is used to give Arthur Seaton a voice to reflect on what has gone before. Having worked in a factory for many years from the age of fifteen, Sillitoe draws on his experience of the daily grind to give us an insight into the homes and lives of common (as in normal), mid-20 th century England. Supposedly a historic landmark in the history of the British novel, the book is full of harsh realism and unromance. Sillitoe tells the story of this all-boozing, no-caring factory worker in suburban Nottingham who lives for the weekend and all that it brings. So sums up Arthur Seaton, the young protagonist of Alan Sillitoe’s 1958 working class novel, Saturday Night & Sunday Morning. “Slung into khaki at eighteen, and when they let you out, you sweat again in a factory, grabbing for an extra pint, doing women at the week-end and getting to know whose husbands are on the nightshifts, working with rotten guts and an aching spine, and nothing for it but money to drag you back there every Monday morning.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |