Saville [B1698]

2018 PB Penguin Vintage Classics reprint of the 1976 BOOKER PRIZE Winning original, in nice clean condition. Called 'the best of all the Bookers' by a leading British critic. "If you are looking for an intellectual and artistic honesty, a patient thoughtfulness and detailed insight into other lives...this novel will delight and move you"- The Guardian. In spite of his brilliance, Colin Saville doesn't fit in easily at the grammar school in town; 1940s middle-class society is so different from the mining village of his childhood. He makes tentative friendships and meets girls over long, empty summers but feels like an outsider with them and over time, increasingly, at home. Following the pattern of David Storey's own early years, Saville is a remarkably honest portrait of the tensions between parents and children, the difficulties of making one's own way in life, and the social divisions that persist still.

From recent-ish mixed Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "A slow, thoughtful novel about a working-class boy growing up in a northern (English) mining village during and after the war (WW2). It's a quiet book, full of emotional distance and unspoken tensions, but it builds a powerful picture of a boy caught between two worlds, two classes. By the end, Colin leaves his old life behind. There's a sense of hope, but also sadness, as if he's misunderstood what really matters. The book made me reflect deeply on my own background-my parents, grandparents, and the world they came from. It's a long book and starts slow, but well worth persevering with. By the end I had enjoyed it much more than I thought I would at the start."; "Phenomenal. Absolutely, undoubtedly phenomenal."; "A long book where nothing happens, the setting never changes and no one does anything remarkable and yet it won the 1976 Booker Prize and I've given it 5 stars. After watching the boy grow up over the 600 pages the ending will bring a lump to your throat."; " It was my first novel by David Storey, and I admired the prose, the narration style and the depiction of time and place. I found many of the coming-of-age topics in the novel as relevant today as when the novel was written. However, it is not an upbeat or heartwarming story."; "Loved it. Sensitive, thoughtful with the words carefully chosen."