A Kind of Loving

‘...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