Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Vintage International) [Paperback]

Alan Sillitoe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 2010 | Series: Vintage International

A rousing and uproarious novel of the life, loves, and misadventures of a working-class rogue, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning marked the arrival of one of the most cherished authors in the twenty-first century.
 
At twenty-two years of age, Arthur Seaton is a hard-drinking lathe operator in a bicycle factory. Sharp, rowdy, and attractive, he is a lover of life in the raw, and his enormous vitality comes pouring through, at a family party, at the county fair, and in several pubs he haunts on Saturday nights, where more often than not he leaves with a woman on his arm. Before long, however, his devil may care life-style gets him into some serious trouble, and Arthur's life takes a turn that not even he could have imagined. 

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Brilliant. . . . [Sillitoe] has assured himself a place in the history of the English novel.”—The New Yorker 
 
“That rarest of all finds: a genuine no-punches-pulled, unromanticised working class novel. Mr. Sillitoe is a born writer, who knows his milieu and describes it with vivid, loving precision.”—Daily Telegraph
 
“Sillitoe's account of the rebellious young factory-fodder hero Arthur Seaton was timely when first published. . . . It is timeless now.”—The Guardian

“One of the best English writers of the day.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
“There are few writers around who can rival Sillitoe when it comes to the complicated business of noticing things.” —Literary Review
 
“A master storyteller.” —The Observer
 
“Miles nearer the real thing than D.H. Lawrence's mystic, brooding working-men ever came.”—Sunday Express
 
“Outspoken and vivid.”—Sunday Times, London
 

About the Author

Alan Sillitoe was born in 1928, the son of a tannery worker. He left school at age fourteen to work in a factory. He was one of the working-class novelists who revitalized British fiction in the 1950s. His first novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was followed with the bestselling collection The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. He adapted both works for the screen in the early 1960s. He is the author of more than 40 works of prose, poetry, and drama. 

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (March 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307389650
• ISBN-13: 978-0307389657
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #489,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Working Class England - Post War, May 24, 2010

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R. J. Marsella (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Vintage International) (Paperback)

Alan Sillitoe's main character Arthur is a young man working at a bicycle plant in industrial post WWII England. His life is essentially drifting between meaningless piecework and weekends of heavy drinking and pursuing other men's wives. We first meet Arthur as he is blind drunk and falling down a flight of stairs in a pub. The novel captures a period in England that seems bleak except when contrasted with what had come just before and in comparison to the deprivations of the war period the people in Sillitoe's story are enjoying a relative level of prosperity.

Arthur is the classic angry young man who is going through life trying to avoid commitments with all his being. The second part of the novel has him beginning to accept that he is ultimately hooked.

I enjoyed the book very much and it's depictions of English life in a specific place and time were spot on.