Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe

For the 2022 Back to the Classics category - Choose a Wild Card Classic I decided to go with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe published 1958. I had heard about the novel and since it was published the year I was born I decided to give it a read.

The author, Alan Sillitoe, was part of the Angry Young Men literary movement that formed in the UK in the 1950’s. They were working class young men who had come of age during the post World War II era.  They were in rebellion against society and the British class system and they wrote gritty, sexually frank novels and plays featuring men like themselves. 

Such is the case with Arthur Seaton the main character in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Arthur is a young man who lives in Nottingham, England and works as a machinist in a bicycle factory.  Arthur works hard, spends his Saturday nights at the pub getting drunk and he is quite the ladies man.  When the novel begins Arthur is having an affair with Brenda the wife of one of his coworkers at the factory but Arthur doesn’t seem worried about the risk he is taking or even feels much guilt:

"Arthur classified husbands into two main categories: those that looked after their wives, and those that were slow.  Jack fell into the latter class, one that Arthur, from experience, knew to be more extensive than the first. Having realised this quickly he had been lucky in love, and had his fun accordingly, making hay while the sun shone, growing up from the age of seventeen with the idea that married women were certainly the best women to know. He had no pity for a “slow” husband“.

In reality Arthur is taking enormous risks not only by having an affair with a married woman but also with his drinking.  When the novel begins for example Arthur is at the pub having gotten wasted and fallen down a flight of stairs. He’s okay but it ‘s a metaphor for where Arthur’s life is headed if he doesn’t turn things around.  

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a novel way ahead of its time in dealing with issues that weren't discussed in the 1950's.  There are parts of this novel that are shocking and disturbing.  I can't say I liked Arthur and the author is not romanticising the life he is leading.   But Arthur and the other characters in the novel are drawn from real life, not having enough money, hanging out at the bars, having affairs with other men's wives and no thought to the future.   The dialogue between the characters can be a little difficult to decipher at times but it gives the novel a realistic tone and this is a very well written book.

Regarding the author, Allan Sillitoe, he grew up poor in Nottingham and his home was a violent one.  He would go on to write novels, plays, children's literature, a memoir but he is best known for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and his collection of short stories The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.  Sillitoe though his childhood was tough went on to have a good life, married for fifty years to the accomplished poet and translater Ruth Fainlight. They had two children.  Alan Sillitoe passed away in 2010 but today he is considered one of the most important British writers of the post World War II era.  Not bad for a young boy who had to quit school at 14.