Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe

At the beginning of the book he's sleeping with married women and hiding from their husbands. After this upbringing, he's basically happy to have food on the table and enough money for beer. Hearing the air raid sirens, his whole family would have to climb into the bomb shelter and wait for the bombs to land. He hates the union, the bosses, the army, the government, taxes, cops and anyone else who gets in his way.Sillitoe makes him human by talking about his childhood poverty before the war. All he wants is his money to go out to pubs, buy nice clothes (Teddy suits?) and sleep with women. Working class shlub works in the Raleigh bicycle factory in Nottingham tooling bike parts on a lathe. Not a thrilling story though I do find a bit of allure from it and will read the author again. Just a slice of life in a 1950s council tenement street full of working class people.

This is a slow read as it plods along with certain episodes happening now and then but there is no real plot, action or climax. A small redeeming factor about the characters. None of the characters are likeable as they have internal moral codes they make up as they go along, but family is always strong. I felt a certain charm for the book as it reminds me of my heritage, with my father growing up in the same era not far away and hearing war stories from my Gran. Part 2: Sunday Night has Arthur realising at 24yo that carefree days are over, he's working on marrying a woman a few years younger than himself and coming to terms with routines of life when settling down. Most of the action takes place on Saturday nights when he goes pubbing, gets blindingly drunk, has affairs with married women, gets beat up by their husbands and gets into general mischief in the 'yard' where he lives being a prankster and having a temper for revenge. He works in a bicycle factory is good at his job and gets paid well, spending his money on classy clothes. The majority of the book contains Part 1 Saturday Night and tells of Arthur's life as a man about the neighbourhood. Obviously somewhat biographical this short novel takes a couple of years in the life of young 21yo Arthur Seaton.

This is sort of the British equivalent of the depressing Irish novels.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe