Birthday - Softcover

Sillitoe, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753166518 ISBN 13: 9780753166512

Publisher: Isis Large Print, 2003

Synopsis

BIRTHDAY is the long-awaited sequel to Alan Sillitoe's classic novel of the 1950s, SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING. Four decades on from the novel which was at the forefront of the new wave of British Literature, we re-discover the Seaton brothers: they are older - certainly; wiser - possibly not. Arthur and Brian Seaton, one with an ailing wife, one with an emotional knapsack of failure and success, are on their way to Jenny's 70th birthday party. Jenny and Brian had, a year ago, experimented with sex - semi-clothed, stealthy, with the bonus of fear. Arthur, of course, had cut a winning swathe through the married and unmarried women of Nottinghamshire. Life has changed. But there is still pleasure and still pain.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Four decades on from the widely praised Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, we rediscover the Seaton brothers. Older: certainly. Wiser: perhaps not. Arthur and Brian, one with an ailing wife, the other with an emotional knapsack of failure and success, are on their way to Jenny’s 70th birthday party. Brian and Jenny had years ago experimented with sex—semi–clothed, stealthy, with the added bonus of fear. Arthur, on the other hand, had cut a libidinous swathe through the female population of Nottinghamshire. Life has changed. So have the brothers, but not so much that they aren’t still recognizable from their old anarchic, authority–hating, idiosyncratic selves. A beautifully crafted novel by the author of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

About the Author:

Alan Sillitoe grew up in the slums of the industrial city of Nottingham. He began to write while in the Royal Air Force, stationed in Malaya. After the war he went to Majorca, where he became a friend of Robert Graves, who encouraged him to write Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958). The N.Y. Herald Tribune said: "Alan Sillitoe has given us one of the better pictures of English working-class life since Arnold Bennett dealt with the Five Towns or D. H. Lawrence with Nottingham collieries." His author's fee for the manuscript rescued him and his wife, the American poet Ruth Fainlight, from poverty and enabled him to afford the balanced diet to which he attributes his recovery from tuberculosis. Saturday Night won the Author's Club Prize for the best British novel of 1958 and was made into a superb movie in 1960. His second book, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1959), was awarded Britain's Hawthornden Prize for 1960 and was made into an excellent film in 1962. William Posters is Sillitoe's play on words of the British "Bill Posters Will Be Prosecuted" (U.S. version---"Post No Bills"), a sentence that has haunted him. The Death of William Posters (1965) is a novel about yet another young man who must escape from the philistinism of the social milieu to which he has been born. Tree on Fire (1967), a novel with autobiographical elements, was published in Britain in 1968. Travels in Nihilon (1971) is a satirical novel about a country controlled by nihilism. Raw Material (1972) is a fictionalized memoir of his childhood and an exploration of the making of a writer.

About this edition

• Publisher: Isis Large Print
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0753166518
• ISBN 13: 9780753166512
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312