Birthday
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âBirthdayâ is the sequel to Alan Sillitoeâs classic novel of the 1950s, âSaturday Night and Sunday Morningâ.
Four decades on from the novel which was at the forefront of the new wave of British literature, we rediscover the Seaton brothers: older, certainly; wiser â 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 Jennyâs seventieth birthday party. Jenny and Brian had years ago experimented with sex â 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.
Alan Sillitoe is undoubtedly one of the greatest English writers of our time, and, indeed, one of the most influential.
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Alan Sillitoe left school at 14 to work in various factories until becoming an air traffic control assistant with the Ministry of Aircraft Production in 1945. He began writing after four years in the RAF, and lived for six years in France and Spain. In 1958, âSaturday Night and Sunday Morningâ was published, and âThe Loneliness of the Long Distance Runnerâ, which won the Hawthornden Prize for literature, came out the following year. Both these books were made into films.
