".whatever people think I am or say I am, that’s what I’m not," ".both became sad, as if they had taken on a happiness that could not be sustained." The title gives the structure of the book the first part is Saturday night (the introduction to Arthur) and the second part Sunday Morning the shorter part brings Arthur to a more settled mature chapter in his life as he quits running from commitment which he compares to being caught like a fish on a hook. This is the author's debut novel and it won the Author's Club First Novel Award. This offers little to make him endearing but he does like to fish and seems to love his family so I guess he's not all bad. This is a post war book (50-60s) of a young British man who is a single, working class male who enjoys making money at his lathe and drinking and carousing the pubs with married women. Reason Read: August 2022 botm, Reading 1001. This was his debut novel (made into a well-regarded movie starring Albert Finley), and we are made to see the disillusionment and lack of opportunities facing the young working class, even if, like Arthur, they don't recognize it themselves. Of course, the good times can't last forever.Īnd despite Arthur's perception of "good times," Silitoe does a masterful job of showing us the limitations of the dead end lives of the working class in Great Britain after the war. As I was reading this, I was struck by how much Arthur reminded me of Michael Caine's Alfie. He chooses married women because he knows they will make no demands on him. He spends his evenings at the pub, and is having sex with Brenda, the wife of one of his friends at the factory who works the night shift. It's shortly after the end of World War II Arthur is a worker at a Nottingham factory, still living at home, biding his time until the weekends. "I'm me and nobody else and whatever people think I am or say I am, that's what I'm not, because they can't know a bloody thing about me."
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