Factories sweat you to death, labour exchanges talk you to death, insurance and income-tax offices milk money from your wage packets and rob you to death.""Mostly you were like a fish: you swam about with freedom, thinking how good it was to be left alone, doing anything you wanted to do and caring about no one, when suddenly: SPLUTCH! the big hook clapped itself into your mouth and you were caught."The author was called one of the "angry young men" which he didn't like. Factories and labour exchanges and insurance offices keep us alive and kicking-so they say-but they’re booby-traps and will suck you under like sinking-sands if you aren’t careful. And it’s best to be a rebel so as to show ’em it don’t pay to try to do you down. 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.Quotes ".both became sad, as if they had taken on a happiness that could not be sustained."".whatever people think I am or say I am, that’s what I’m not,""Once a rebel, always a rebel. 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. Reason Read: August 2022 botm, Reading 1001.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. I have to look to Sillitoe himself to see that he did escape from these circumstances and survive to write many books, this one of which was really great.It could almost be called 'How poor Republicans are made.' Read more It's hard for me to accept that this is what this character's whole life may be. It doesn't glorify violence, or affairs, or factory work, it makes them seem quite squalid really, but human.I wanted him to leave Nottingham, get a wider perspective on life and maybe strive for something better. I want to dislike it, but I can't because it makes the whole class mentality understandable. But towards the end the idea of having a woman in his bed every night, and not having to hide from or fight their husbands starts to appeal to him.It was a testament to Sillitoe's beautiful writing that I made it through this book at all. At the beginning of the book he's sleeping with married women and hiding from their husbands. After this upbringing, he's basically happy to have food on the table and enough money for beer. Hearing the air raid sirens, his whole family would have to climb into the bomb shelter and wait for the bombs to land. He hates the union, the bosses, the army, the government, taxes, cops and anyone else who gets in his way.Sillitoe makes him human by talking about his childhood poverty before the war. All he wants is his money to go out to pubs, buy nice clothes (Teddy suits?) and sleep with women. Working class shlub works in the Raleigh bicycle factory in Nottingham tooling bike parts on a lathe.
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