A Kind of Loving
Published on 1. June 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
372 pages
978-1-914595-46-2 (ISBN)
Description
Vic Brown is a young man on the way up, he's got a job, money, ambitions and a new girlfriend, Ingrid Rothwell. His mate has even got a car - a Triumph TR3. He's never had it so good. But Ingrid wants to get married, it's the only respectable thing to do. She's a step above Vic and he knows it. If they marry they could move in with Ingrid's mother. He could move out from the house he grew up in. A real married couple. The world has begun to close in on Vic.
A Kind of Loving is a seminal novel in British working-class fiction. First published in 1960 it has been adapted for stage, television, radio, and was made into an iconic film. A Kind of Loving made Stan Barstow one of the key voices of the 1960s cultural renaissance in British life.
With a new afterword by David Collard.
A Kind of Loving is a seminal novel in British working-class fiction. First published in 1960 it has been adapted for stage, television, radio, and was made into an iconic film. A Kind of Loving made Stan Barstow one of the key voices of the 1960s cultural renaissance in British life.
With a new afterword by David Collard.
Reviews / Votes
'...WARMTH, LIVELINESS, HONESTY, COMPASSION...' SUNDAY TIMES"UNSENTIMENTAL AND UNPATRONISING" THE GUARDIAN
"OF THE RED-BLOODED WORKING-CLASS WRITERS WITH NORTHERN ROOTS - JOHN BRAINE, ALAN SILLITOE, DAVID STOREY, KEITH WATERHOUSE... STAN BARSTOW WAS ARGUABLY THE BEST... HIS AIM QUIETLY AMBITIOUS, AS HE SAW IT 'SEEKING OUT THE UNIVERSAL IN THE PARTICULAR'." TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT -- Publisher: Parthian Books 'So there I am - Victor Arthur Brown, twenty years old, one of the lads, and not very sure of himself under the cocky talk and dirty jokes and wise cracks. Take me or leave me, I'm all I've got.'
Victor is the likeable working-class hero of Stan Barstow's post-war classic, that older readers might know through John Schlesinger's 1961 film version starring Alan Bates, June Ritchie and Thora Hird. Or again, you might remember it from the 1980s' TV serialisation, or from one of the theatre or radio dramatisations since. Or you might only recently have come across it as serialised on Radio 4's Woman's Hour. In other words, it's a classic that's never gone away, and it's wonderful to see it in print in a new fiftieth anniversary edition.
Set in the north of England in the 1950s, A Kind of Loving captures the period of extraordinary social and political change that followed the Second World War. The 'telly' has become ubiquitous; there are plenty of jobs, which is especially empowering for young people; morals and mores and attitudes are beginning to change. But the sixties are still around the corner and some things have yet to shift. The lino on the bedroom floor and the lack of central heating might send a shiver through us twenty-first-century softies, but the stringent moral codes and the harsh expectation that 'you made your bed, so you lie in it' are rather more chilling. So, when young Vic dips his wick - just the once - and gets unlucky, he looks set to end up with a wife, a life and a mother-in-law he hadn't reckoned on.
Barstow's tender and humane story, told in Vic's youthful northern vernacular, gives a strong sense of what it was like to live at a time when traditional notions of individual and social integrity were coming under question. In the end, Vic does the honourable thing, several times over. But where will it lead? I'm hoping Parthian will let us have the other two books in the trilogy soon so I can find out. -- Suzy Ceulan Hughes @ www.gwales.com
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cardigan
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
358 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-914595-46-2 (9781914595462)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Fiction writer and dramatist, Barstow was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He attended Ossett Grammar School, then began writing in the 1950s. Along with Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Keth Waterhouse he is considered one of the pioneers of the 1960s school of northern literary realism. His first great success was the novel A Kind of Loving, which became a film directed by John Schlesinger and starring Alan Bates. Since then he has produced eleven novels and three books of short stories, many set in the fictional mining town of Cressley, as well as TV scripts and material for the radio and theatre. Other works include the novel Ask Me Tomorrow (1962), and Joby, which was turned into a television play starring Patrick Stewart. For the last ten years of his life he made his home in South Wales with the distinguished radio dramatist Diana Griffiths. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Welsh Academy and an Honorary Master of Arts of the Open University.