Working all day at a lathe leaves Arthur Seaton with energy to spare in the evenings. A hard-drinking, hard-fighting young rebel of a man, he knows what he wants and he's sharp enough to get it. And before long, his carryings-on with a couple of married women is local gossip. But then one evening he meets a young girl in a pub, and Arthur's life begins to look less simple. Allan Sillitoe's classic novel of the 1950's is a story of timeless significance. The film of the novel, starring Albert Finney, transformed British cinema and was much imitated. "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". "His writing has real experience in it and an instinctive accuracy that never loses its touch. His book has a glow about it as though he had plugged it into some basic source of the working-class spirit." - "Guardian". "Miles nearer the real thing than D.H.Lawrence's mystic, brooding working-men ever came." - "Sunday Express". "Very outspoken and vivid." - "Sunday Times". "A refreshing originality." - "Times Literary Supplement".

2004-05-27 Spits In the Eye Of A 'Perfect Past'

Pity poor Arthur Seaton...slaving over a hot lathe at Raleigh Cycles in Nottingham all day in the late 1950's. Age 21 and full of raging energy he is a selfish, hedonistic archetype that some would have us believe did not come into being until the 1980's.

Alan Sillitoe has captured the old industrial Nottingham of the time and, within that context, the Arthur Seaton's are perfectly placed to give us a meaningful glimpse of 'what it was like' to grow up in the relative post-war poverty in that England. That Arthur is a rogue, albeit slightly loveable, highlights the division between spiviness and honesty - hard graft being offset by binges.

As a social document, 'Saturday Night & Sunday Morning'is rich in detail and this makes for a very enjoyable read.