Saville

by David Storey

WINNER OF THE 1976 BOOKER PRIZE

'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' 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, 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.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, British Literature, Literary Fiction, Classics, Novels, Coming Of Age

597 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

David Storey was an English playwright, screenwriter, award-winning novelist and a former professional rugby league player. Storey was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1933, and studied at the Slade School of Art.

His first two novels were both published in 1960, a few months apart: This Sporting Life, which won the Macmillan Fiction Award and was adapted for an award-winning 1963 film, and Flight Into Camden, which won the Somerset Maugham Award. His next novel, Radcliffe (1963) met with widespread critical acclaim in both England and the United States, and during the 1960s and 70s, Storey became widely known for his plays, several of which achieved great success.

He returned to fiction in 1972 with Pasmore, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Saville (1976) won the Booker Prize and has been hailed by at least one critic as the best of all the Booker winners. His last novel was Thin-Ice Skater (2004).

David Storey lived in London. He was married and had four children.

Reviews

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am nearing the end of my occasional project to read all of the Booker Prize winners, with just one more to go now. This was the 1976 winner, but in many ways it feels older - in fact the book it reminded me most of is D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers.

This book tells the story of Colin Saville, a miner's son of Storey's age from a village in South Yorkshire, starting with his parents' arrival in the village in the late 1920s and ending in the 1950s. Storey recreates the life of the village and the poverty and drudgery of its residents in vivid detail.

Colin's opportunities to escape the village and the pit depend on gaining entry to the grammar school in the nearby city. He passes this exam, and gains access to a world of which his parents have little or no experience, but he cannot entirely escape the shackles of family obligations and expectations, and he struggles to relate to his richer friends. Opting to train as a teacher instead of taking an extra year at school and aiming for a university place, he soon becomes disillusioned with life teaching those that fail the exam.

There are occasional lighter moments, for example the father's attempts to build an air raid shelter, which is thwarted by flooding, Colin's National Service medical, which he unexpectedly fails due to "flat feet", and the escapades of his privileged friend Neville Stafford.

I found this book an enjoyable and rewarding read, but it is quite long, so some interest in British social history is probably a necessary prerequisite.

One minor irritation is that my Vintage paperback edition appears to have been photocopied from an original copy with holes punched through the text - fortunately in most cases only one or two letters were lost so it is easy enough to deduce what is missing.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing story. The subject something very ordinary but memorising. I was pleasantly surprised with this story about Colin a coal miners son growing up in Britain during the war and post war. His families poverty and struggle for him to go to grammar school where he was a bit of a fish out of water.

His growth into manhood and the trials and tribulations he faced. His friends the smarmy, lazy Stafford, Reagan, Bletchley and his loves. In the end he struggles in not fitting in his class and to feel satisfied with his life.

This is a novel that draws you in and is fascinating with the descriptions of a different time and way of life. No modern technology and the class system which limited you to a certain level and life.

A masterpiece in making something so ordinary so extraordinary. Well worth a read.

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

The story of Colin Saville from his birth to his early twenties is one that looks at family dynamics with a laser-like precision. The tension between wanting better for your children and knowing that that betterment could cast them adrift from you, how much do you owe your parents, what are your responsibilities and duties to those who supported and raised you. What is striking is how even 80 years later than this story begins, class mobility is still a rarity, being based less on intelligence or academic achievement than being from the right family, knowing the right people as Colin finds out for himself.

The story is loosely based on the author’s own childhood. Colin is born the son of a miner in a mining village in the north. His father, aware that the physical demands of the job are wearing him out bodily and the poverty he lives in exhausts him mentally, is determined that his son will not follow him into the pit and so sets about pushing his son to pass the 11+ and gain a place at grammar school which he dutifully does.

The novel is a meander through Saville’s school days and ends with him a short way into his career. Nothing epic happens, nothing tragic, nothing exciting but it is a work of gravitas. What Storey does incredibly well is highlight the multiple tensions that are created when a child is elevated academically or socially above the rest of their family. The resentment felt when forced to study by a father who did none himself, the opposing forces of feeling that it is one’s duty to stay at home and use your better situation to improve life for the family who supported you and the knowledge that by staying you are hobbling your own life chances. How you become adrift from your community as your markers of common interest grow fewer. How ultimately, like Saville, you end up isolated, fitting in neither with your background nor the life promised you. An outsider in every situation. One of the saddest parts is his estrangement from his brother who has no desire to go to the grammar and ends up going down the pit. Their relationship is fractured by a fist fight born of Saville’s jealousy of his brother’s happiness. His brother is at ease in the world and within himself in a way Saville knows he will never be.

There are moments that show the chasm that has to be bridged for Saville. On taking his girlfriend home to meet his parents she remarks,

“Haven’t you ever thought of moving from that house?” and later, “Don’t you mind being so poor?”

Evidence of the wealthy’s belief that poverty is a choice is pervasive and longstanding.

The one issue I had is that Storey never fully explains why Saville does not put more effort in at school starting on the first day. I could understand the disenchantment growing as the realisation he will never fit in grows but not it being there from the off. This minor niggle does not detract from the novel as a whole and after watching the boy grow up over the 600 pages the ending will bring a lump to your throat.

[Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harry and Ellen Saville are starting a family in England prior to the beginning of WWII. Harry is a coal miner or collier. He is intelligent and ambitious but limited by what options he has available. Like some parents, he pours his ambitions into his son, Colin. He wants Colin to never have to work at the colliery; to that goal he encourages Colin’s efforts in school. Colin is bright and wants to please his parents, so he applies himself diligently, but struggles to follow the dictates of his teachers and the English education system. At times Colin seems to work against his own best interests, to make everything more difficult than it needs to be. He also does not seem to know who he is, what he wants or likes. He is too busy trying to please others. He emulates others, trying to find what approach fits him, but it is like trying on different clothes; the clothes don’t change what is underneath. Also like some families, the expectations for the additional children, in this case Colin’s brothers Stephen and Richard, are less demanding than for Colin.

David Storey uses 3rd party narration, but entirely from Colin’s perspective, to tell this story. There is little insight provided into Colin’s decisions and motivation; as a reader you must form your conclusions based on Colin’s actions. You get conflicting information as to how to interpret the actions of other characters: their actions can say one thing and their words another. As Colin matures, he changes into someone who seems very different than the kid you first met.

The novel Saville won the Booker Award in 1976. It is long; my edition was 555 pages. 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.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

#Binge Reviewing all my past Reads:

[Read in 2018]

Saville is an absorbing and profoundly brooding tome that rests upon the struggles of class, ambition, and identity in mid-20th-century England. The story follows Colin Saville, a working-class lad from a coal-mining town, as he circumnavigates the complications of social mobility, education, and individual relationships. The prose is spare yet evocative, painting a blatant yet representative portrait of post-war Britain. The novel’s forte lies in its psychological complexity, representing Colin’s core skirmishes as he distances himself from his roots while never completely belonging to the middle-class world he aspires to. The pacing of this book can be slow at times, but the rich character expansion and nuanced consideration of class tensions make it a rewarding read. Winner of the 1976 Booker Prize, this book is an emotional and thought-provoking novel that reverberates with anyone who has experienced the challenges of breaking away from their past.

[Ravi Gangwani · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I really liked about this 1976 Booker Prize winning novel is its Coetzeeshness.
The childhood descriptions were as par compared to 'Boyhood' of Sir JM Coetzee and writing style was slow and moving. This book is all about Coal Minor's son Colin Saville and pictures from his life, right from his birth to bitter adulthood, vacillating in angry formulas of life. But the areas where this book scores are dark, rummaging and going-no-where kind of a life. The meaningless of his family for him, the dullness of his school and later his job, the failed relationship and still the agony of living in the same space with no promising light around.

I was really afraid to start this book but thank god I came across this.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

A reflection on Saville by David Storey

Saville won the Booker Prize in 1976. In such a vast novel it is inevitable that the pace will occasionally quicken and slacken, but a book like this can be read over weeks, almost dipped into as the passing phases of Colin’s life unfold. David Storey was born in Wakefield, and so was I. It could be argued that his most famous and perhaps still most successful work is “This Sporting Life”, a portrait of a Rugby League player who achieves local fame and then notoriety as his life and career blossom and then fall apart. It was filmed in the early 1960s, with Richard Harris playing the starring role. Along with about 28000 others, I was in Wakefield Trinity’s Belle Vue ground soon after midday to make sure that I got a standing place by the railings next to the pitch to see Trinity play Wigan in a cup-tie. I was only ten and needed to be early because, had I been further back amongst the crowd, I would have seen nothing. Wakefield beat Wigan 5-4, with Fred Smith scoring the only try of the game at my end. They went on to win at Wembley that year, beating Huddersfield in the game where Neil Fox used a drop goal strategy not seen before or since.

But before that cup-tie against Wigan, the packed Trinity ground became a film set. We were all unpaid extras as Richard Harris and members of the Trinity second team filmed some actions sequences for “This Sporting Life”. I show no disrespect for Richard Harris by recalling that the sequence required a whole string of takes, necessitated by the fact that the star kept dropping the ball! I have seen the film several times, but I have not yet managed to spot my short-trousered legs behind the sticks at the Belle Vue end. They are there, somewhere.

I digress at length from my intended review because Colin, the central character of Saville, could easily have been me, or perhaps my older brother. Like Colin we were brought up in a small Yorkshire mining village. Also like Colin we went to a grammar school and experienced similar tensions and contradictions as a result of social class differences. And again like Colin we both became, as a result of that education, something previous generations of our permanent-feeling community had never aspired to, perhaps never knew existed. Unlike Colin, we did not aspire to become writers, except of course for me, who eventually tried to become one! It was the education that changed everything and this aspect of Saville is beautifully portrayed, right down to the visit to the old Kingswell’s shop in Wakefield to buy the ludicrously expensive school uniform, a source of pride for the miner’s family, but also a pointer indicating how lives will inevitably diverge.

Saville also deals with how social mores were changing in the new second half of the twentieth century. Colin’s parents simply could not relate to how his life was developing, perhaps finding hardest to stomach the individuality that he developed and was determined to express. It was a quality you could not pursue when, as poor people, your lives were always inter-dependent. The communal nature of their poverty made this a desire they could not comprehend and occasionally his pursuit of his own ends was seen by them – perhaps quite rightly – as errant selfishness. Of course, we now live in an age where the individual is the norm, the indivisible unit of society and, perhaps, where an idea of community is mere nostalgia.

Above all else David Storey’s Saville evokes a time and a place. It also evokes a language, a dialect that preserves the use of thee, thy, thou and thine and, although occasionally laboured, the book’s specialised vocabulary and syntax create the sound of a Yorkshire twang.

Saville has no vast themes, no overtly historical settings against which the characters enact their lives. Rather it concentrates on a social and economic setting which was quite peculiar to these mining communities in Yorkshire. But this is the book’s real strength. What we have is a social document, as powerful and yet as specific as some of its nineteenth century equivalents. Now, after the closure of the pits, though the villages remain, these communities have disappeared to be replaced by settings that perhaps offer less chance of social mobility or self-respect than in Saville’s time. This provides and irony that my own novel set in these same places might bring into focus. But in Saville’s time, the idea that the pits would close never entered anyone’s head, a fact which makes Colin’s transformation through the book remarkable, credible and yet ultimately sad, since we now see it as effectively driven by necessity, not choice.

[Alex Rendall · Rating 1 out of 5]

This review has been hard to write, because this book has been extremely difficult to read. This is a personal thing on my part, because I have always found novels that describe childhood in school to be difficult, mainly because my latter years in school were not always pleasant. Saville talks about school life in spades, and a difficult school life at that. It tells the tale of Colin Saville, son of a coal miner in a 1930s Northern British mining village, who wins a scholarship to the prestigious local grammar school, and his subsequent struggle to build a life for himself in spite of his family’s grinding poverty. Colin tries to fit in with the other boys at the grammar school but his humble origins are constantly shown up and his inability to fit in alienates him from his peers and his family, leaving him with nowhere to go.

Saville is unremittingly grim. The oppressive landscape of the coal mines looms large over everything and acts as a metaphor for the hard life and poverty that Colin and his family have to live through. Here the reader witnesses people having to pay for their medical treatment prior to the creation of the NHS, the struggle to stay warm in sub-standard housing and the exhaustion suffered from constant physically demanding hard work. The coal dust settles on everything and everywhere is grimy and dark, even when Colin’s mother tries to keep the house clean.

Education is seen as Colin’s escape from all this, and his passing of the eleven-plus grammar school entrance examination seems to be his ticket out, but as the novel progresses his tale does not pan out that way. We see the changes in Colin’s peers, their successes and failures, as Colin himself grows up. He becomes alienated from those around him, his family and his friends, and as a character he is hard to warm to because he barely speaks at all. Storey has created a protagonist who is an everyman character, a figurehead for the class struggle, and his complicated friendship with the upper-middle class boy Stafford reflects the differences between their two worlds but tells us little about Colin’s own feelings, wants or desires.

I did not enjoy reading Saville. I found it grim, depressing and unrelenting in its misery. The school passages made me feel deeply uncomfortable and the story only got interesting very near the end when it was abruptly terminted. I could write more for this review but don’t feel the need. If, like me, you read for escapism, this really is not going to be the book for you.

[Colin Davison · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel of its time and place, possibly one of the great epics of post-war working class fiction that owes much to the legacy of D.H. Lawrence.
Inevitably so many stories and plays that came immediately before Saville featured characters leaving the horny-handed sons - or rather fathers of toil to go 'oop t'college' with ambitions to become writers, a trend already satirised by Mr Python.
Yet the situation was real enough, even if not every first-generation grammar school boy longed to be a poet, and Storey sticks unashamedly to his task with a Puritanical aversion to exaggeration or over-dramatisation.
There is an instinctive feeling for place, described not from above, but with the eye and the nose of one raised in such a village, with its permeating dirt, the sewage farm where children play, and the pit dominating all. Buses and trains - coal-fired - are a recurrent theme, ending with the one that will finally take Colin away to London.
But this is not culmination of wish-fulfilment, a hero succeeding against all odds. For our Colin, disillusioned with the passivity of those who tolerate their production line processing into the capitalist system, is equally sceptical of those who profess a political ideology to do something about it.
Colin is a decent lad, refusing to get involved with petty shoplifting, reticent with girlfriends, refusing to take a flat so he can stay home to help his family. But in fact all that hesitation turns out to be a reluctance to get involved, a care rather for an inner flame that it seems will never set the world on fire. Isolated between contempt for Batty and his uncultured, criminally-intent associates, and the privileged, charming, all-too-easily successful Stafford, alienated from his family, his only way is out, and upwards one hopes.
If there's hope, it's in the young man's growing self-confidence, such as in a glorious scene confronting an old-stick, cynical headmaster in which Colin, now a teacher, at last sticks up for himself.
Philip, another reviewer on Goodreads, writes very well of a childhood that had much in common with that of the author and of his characters. Yet you do not have to have lived through exactly the same experiences to feel the authenticity of Storey's narrative. The very ordinariness of the people and the events bring it alive, and yet the tension never allows the moentum to flag. It is an extraordinary achievement.

[Kenneth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finishing it felt like being released from prison.

[Mientras Leo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Desde luego no es Sillitoe ni de lejos

[Irene · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of a working class mining family, particularly of the second born son. Beginning in the 1930s and spanning about three decades, this is a story of the struggle to give the next generation a better life and of the slow growing frustration, even rage, living in the gut of that next generation. 3.5 stars

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that is going to stay with me for awhile. I enjoyed the minutiae of Saville, but I also found the tone to be just so well handled. It is a tone of bleakness, frank existence, and of struggle.

Struggle to get out of a place, struggle to make others see a place as you see it, struggle to seek approval, struggle to give approval, struggle to please. This was what really struck me most, was the parent-child dynamics being played out. Michael Reagan and his violin, Batty going to jail (just as was expected of him), Stafford doing as he pleases because he comes from money, and then we have our Saville. Colin's parents put him through school to give him a way out of the pit, to give him hope, and more opportunity than they had. Plenty more opportunity than his grandparents had. And in the end, as Saville tries to find his own identity and pressure his brothers to do the same, he is convinced that rather than doing him a favor, his parents have forced him in to "prostitution." His sense of duty to the family, supplying wages and staying at home, has turned to bitter resentment that he claims he has no way out of.

So, when he finally does leave, is it permanent? I don't see Saville's departure lasting long...

As for the other characters in the novel, I was especially intrigued by Michael Reagan and his behaviors, especially in to adulthood. While Colin's parents supported him, MR's father ridiculed his violin playing and berated his mother for supporting him, leaving Michael with no real sentiment or attachment to them as they fell ill.

Oh Saville's women... It seemed that he was closer to his mother than his father, and he has this righteous sense of propriety when it comes to his brother's behavior with women, but then Saville turns around and runs off with the easiest girl on the block... and then finds himself in bed with a married woman. All in all, I found Colin to be just... spineless when it came to relationships.

Throughout the novel, there is a never-ending sense of people entering and leaving Saville's life. They may return often, they may not, but he is always able to shrug them off and walk away... By detaching Saville from the pit, have his parents prevented him from having any real ties to anything?

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. A very well written, engaging, interesting historical fiction novel about a coal miners son, Colin Saville. The story is about the first 26 years in Colin’s life, from the late 1920s to the mid 1950s. The novel is well over 500 pages. Colin is the eldest of three brothers. He is encouraged to study and go to college. Colin is a conscientious, hard working boy.

I enjoyed the classroom scenes, the descriptions of Colin’s friends and life in the coal miners house. Colin has a mixed array of friends from different family backgrounds.

This book won the 1976 Booker Prize. Highly recommended.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книга - почти бесстрастный рассказ о жизни в небольшой шахтёрской деревушке. Автор настолько хорошо описывает ситуацию, что в книгу погружаешься с головой. Да, это я живу на той улице, за стеной от одного из упомянутых семейств. Очевидно, что жизнь шахтёров нельзя назвать лёгкой, а заработок - хотя бы достаточным. Родители Колина Сэвила заставляют его учиться изо всех сил, ибо это его единственный шанс вырваться из этого окружения. Тут всё понятно и всей душой болеешь за мальчишку. Это, условно, первая часть книги.
Теперь, надо понимать, что это было за время, когда Стори взялся за перо. Это выло время острополитических "-измов". Выросшего Колина называют поочерёдно то коммунистом, то анархистом, то оппортунистом. Как будто быть самим собой он не может, надо его куда-то распределить. По-моему, Стори не особо приветствует коммунизм, и слава богу. Один из друзей Колина говорит о классах, но полную чушь. Стори показывает в своей книге, что хотя рабочий класс и существует, всё равно каждый человек - индивидуальность. Так, каждый мальчик - Колин, Йен и Майкл, а также Батти - пошёл своим путём, предопределённым разными обстоятельствами. Кроме того, существует Невил, мальчик из другого класса - аристократ, который вообще-то тоже недоволен своим местом в жизни. Итого, как мне кажется, Стори не считает, что нужна некая коммунистическая революция и уровняловка. Революция, считает Стори, должна происходить в душе каждого индивидуума. Короче, мне кажется, у англичан совершенно особый путь, среди них коммунизм обречён (на самом-то деле он и среди других народох обречён, как показала история).
Итак, Колин учится изо всех сил, попадает в колледж и получает специальность - он учитель. И тут он обнаруживает, что оказался в собственной семье чуждым классовым элементом. Пока он раскрывал свой ум, родители его всё больше закосневали, их сломили обстоятельства и таким трудом обученный сын оказывается умником, который так несправедливо получает зарплату как у отца, вкалывавшего всё жизнь. Вот это поворот! Ребёнок был для родителей только инвестицией, от которой ожидалась только прибыль в будущем, личность Колина никому не нужна - слишком его родители простоваты для этого, хоть и подсознательно понимают кое-что (см. их отношение к самому старшему, умершему ещё до рождения Колина, сыну). Идеальным воплощением подобного проституирования отпрыска является Йен. Он вырос и стал приносить прибыль родителям, ненавидя их при этом и остро ощущая горечь несвободы. В итоге удалось ли ему "выбраться из шахты"? (Ответ - нет.)
Колин - человек будущего у Стори. Только ему удаётся обрести эту свободу, правда принесли её не работа, зарплата, обустроенность или подруга жизни, а только потеря всего этого. Если честно, на мой взгляд тут уже сквозят буддийские жизненные ценности. Зато в наши дни будущее, которого хотел автор, уже наступило: теперь нет необходимости убиваться за копейки на шахте или вкалывать на нелюбимой работе - каждый человек в Англии вправе распоряжаться собой по собственному усмотрению и имеет ресурсы для духовного развития.
Несмотря на всё сказанное выше, многое от книги осталось глубоко в душе таки невысказанным. Личность Колина Сэвила сильно взволновала меня, лично я почувствовала родство душ с ним, причём не в последнюю очередь благодаря таланту рассказчика Стори. Все мы немножечко Сэвилы. Прокоммунистический антураж может ввести в заблуждение - советская литература о светлом будущем, которого очевидно никогда не могло быть, вызывает у меня тошноту. Но "Сэвил" - это нечто большее и лучшее.

[piratemoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a very strange feel to this book. It felt very removed from that which it was narrating, the sense of alienation which the main character, Colin, feels by the end, being a part of the reader-experience throughout.

That isn't to say I didn't enjoy it. I did, actually. I rather got into reading it. It gave a view into a world that I didn't know, but that became increasingly familiar throughout. It was a world that I could imagine my Grandparents being aware of, something they would have known and recognised. This environment and the changes which it went through were evoked in a great deal of clarity.

But I am afraid that the same cannot be said of the characters. They seemed to remain static. Colin only seems to age by virtue of getting older and the world around him changing. Perhaps this is something to do with that alienation cited before – because I was not immersed in the interior of the character from the start, I found it difficult to find any evidence of character development. I found myself in the same position of puzzlement that Colin did – like him, I did not understand his character the way others seemed to.

'“Ever since you were a baby you've kept things to yourself.”
She waited, her hands poised in the bowl, her head bowed to the sink.
“I never thought I'd been secretive,” he said.
“Not secretive.” She tried to smile, her face shadowed in the corner of the room. “I mean the things you feel you can never express. People can take advantage of that at times.”
“Oh, I've never been aware of it.”'

He doesn't understand himself – and neither do I. There didn't, to be honest, seem all that much to understand. Neither do many of the other characters seem to develop much. By the end of the book they have become caricatures. Their characteristics just become more and more pronounced. But Colin does not. He remains just this 'he', his only real feature a slight puzzlement. It is stated that he changes, that he gets angry and goes off the rails, but none of this comes across in the characters at all.

Towards the end of the book there is a strange episode which seems to suggest that Colin is some kind of reincarnation of his deceased elder brother Andrew, or at least an aspect of him. This is a very odd suggestion in a book which has been based so much around the harshness of real life, but perhaps an appropriate thought for someone as (apparently) poetic as Colin. I can't see him as a poet, to be honest. He lacks the emotion.

[Courtney H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I have fallen behind on reviewing and on reading, so I figured I might try to do a little catching up. Since I just reviewed Sons and Lovers, might as well start with Saville, one of its successors. Saville falls into a fairly well-trod category of British literature: boy grows up in poor mining town, tries to escape, alternatively aided and held back by imperfect parents. Similarly, the main character is conflicted about his town: he feels his mining roots strongly, but at the same time yearns for a life free of it but can never quite shed his own skin. But while the territory is familiar, Saville does not hide the ball. The novel’s purpose is clear from the beginning and instead Storey focuses on telling a good story about characters you can engage with. Storey also is unapologetic about his main character, Colin. He is selfish; he is stubborn; he is good enough to scramble out of the mining town but not quite good enough to be great; and that makes for an interesting character and an interesting story. It is not, ultimately a story about greatness breaking free – one expects greatness to break free, or the comfort of a tragedy if outside forces prevent it. With mediocrity – granted, one accompanied by some talent and intelligence, but something more middle-of-the road, the likelihood of success is smaller just as the character’s desperation for success grows. Here is the interesting tension of the book, I think, and not a small part of why it was a good book to read. Moreover, Storey knows how to tell a story (no pun intended). It is a page turner; the words and pages flow easily, quickly, and there is an actual plot. It moves slowly in that it covers his life in a detailed way, but the book isn’t bogged down with description (while also successfully making the mining town live as the extra character that the mining town always seems to be) – it is about what characters do, and it is told simply and directly. It is a successful model for a simple story concept, that plays out effectively on the page.

In the end, it isn't my favorite Booker, but it was a solid entry.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought the last part of this book was really excellent but it just took far too long getting there.

[Ivar Volmar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Väga nauditav, kuidas autor oskab just äkiliste pöörete ja eredate sündmuste puudumisega edasi anda ääremaastunud kaevuriasula täielikku perspektiivitust ning seda, kuidas selline koht võib olla otsekui soomülgas, mis ei annagi enamikule seal sündinutele võimalust kuhugi paremasse kohta välja rabelda. Suur osa kohanevad ning elavadki kogu oma elu otsekui rutiinses unes.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brought all sorts of other books to my mind: Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence, of course, Room at the Top by John Braine, even How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn. Early/mid-century bildungsroman among the industrial working class and the tensions created by aspirations to escape one's environment while also feeling connected to it.

[Mamaujeni · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you grew up in a low-income family; particularly if you've been exposed to a more comfortable way of life (tertiary education or more well-off mates), then this book will surely strike a chord with you. Powerful stuff.

[GK · Rating 2 out of 5]

1976 Booker

Story of Colin Saville, from birth until he finally decides to take control of his life.

[Peter Jansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although somewhat bleak this book stayed with me and really gripped me. It really puts you in the shoes of the main character.

[Raychel Higgs · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is over. Today is a good day.

[bikerbuddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saville has a familiar style that makes it an easily accessible book for those who like traditional novels in the vein of nineteenth century realism. The opening scene is like something straight out of Dickens: a coal haulier’s cart draws into one of the narrow streets of Saxton, bringing Harry Saville, his wife Ellen and their child Andrew to their new home, pulled by a large, dirt-grey horse. The scene could easily be set in the nineteenth century and the David Storey’s style is clearly meant to imitate the social novels of that period: Towards the end of the third decade of the present century… the novel begins, echoing many novels of the previous century which were written in the era in which the novel as an artistic form became dominant. For readers in Victoria’s England, the period of the present century could be assumed. I found Storey’s style appealing, unassuming and written in deference to the story, itself.

To draw the Dickensian comparison just a little further (one might make a case for Elizabeth Gaskell or Thomas Hardy just as easily), Storey writes of the poor in a similar fashion: of the depredations faced by the poor – Oliver Twist – and the attempts to rise above class – Great Expectations – or the opportunities of education – David Copperfield or Hard Times. These are also the themes of Storey’s narrative, representing the gruelling labour of the poor, their living conditions and social stratification which draws their plight into stark relief. But as a protagonist of a social realist novel, Colin Saville, Harry and Ellen’s second son, does not find education to be an opportunity, but disappointment, even an entrapment.

Saville is set in 1940s England in the mining town of Saxton. The title refers to the novel’s young protagonist, Colin Saville, who is growing up with his parents, Harry and Ellen, and later his younger brothers, Steven and Richard. Harry is a coal miner, forced to ride his bike to the colliery every morning, since he has no position in the nearby local colliery. Harry dreams that their second son (Andrew, their first, died just prior to Colin’s birth) will escape the coal pit through education. Without a proper formal education, himself, Harry attempts to tutor Colin to help him pass the entrance exam for the grammar school. When Colin passes the exam, his success is seen as a sign that the family’s prospects have improved.

Saville is also a novel dealing with age-old themes of fate and self-determination, although it is not overtly religious. Yet, having said that, the novel bears a subtle allegorical influence from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Stephens, a teaching colleague, in reaction to Colin’s inability to capitalise upon his potential, tells him: You’re Pilgrim bogged down at the gates of the city. Stephens’s language is peppered with allegorical tropes: I’ll be leaving soon, of course, myself. Casting myself off from this rotten town: embarking from these shores of oblivion. Unlike his namesake, however, Colin cannot caste off from the City of Destruction (Saxton) to the "Celestial City" (in this case London), as he is bound by a sense of familial responsibility. Having achieved a modicum of success he feels obliged to help his family, even though he is philosophically and intellectually estranged from them.

Read my full review of Saville by David Storey on the Reading Project

[M F · Rating 3 out of 5]

“David,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, nodding his head.

“Please tell me that, at some point, Colin is going to be old enough to be able to voice thoughts. Any thoughts at all. Even one thought would suffice. Just so I know he’s not actually a piece of machinery covered in skin.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding his head.

“And will he also develop a personality?”

“No,” he said, and shrugged.

“Really? No personality at all?”

“No,” he said, and shook his head.

“I would prefer if he did.”

“Yes,” he said, and shrugged.

“Mr. Storey, I sense in you an inclination toward insubordination. But quiet, like.”

“Yes,” he said, and shrugged.

“Very well. Mr. Storey… David. It really would be for the best if your protagonist had no personality at all. I repeat: do not write him a personality.”

“Yes,” he said, and began writing him a personality.

And so it is that, on roughly page 375 of 481, young Colin finally has something resembling a full conversation with another human being. And, by p. 425, he has voiced some thoughts—vague, it is true, and frequently contradictory, but thoughts nonetheless—and, finally, we begin to know him (though whether that constitutes a positive development will depend largely on one’s temperament).

David Storey’s Saville is the next Booker prize-winning novel on my list, a glacially-paced, realist Bildungsroman starring son of a coal miner Colin Saville. A labour of love (taking, apparently, ten years to write), it is impressive in the narrowest, most pedantic of ways. There is a cohort of readers—among them, I’d imagine, Storey himself, if his weirdly-braggy introduction to this edition is anything to go by—who would argue that this novel belongs among the Booker greats. These would be the same cohort of people who would uphold The Clientele’s Suburban Light or one of those Real Estate albums as timeless masterpieces: people who revel in minutiae and respect craftpersonship above all else. These people are impervious to tedium, and would probably call Steely Dan one of the greatest bands in the history of music. They would argue that Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs is the one true masterpiece of 19th-century American lit.

They would be wrong. Now, don’t get me wrong: I like Steely Dan and Sarah Orne Jewett well enough, and I feel the same about Saville, even though I could only handle reading about 50 pages at a time. It is wonderfully detailed in its depiction of its setting, a tiny coal-mining village called Saxton, and the more-or-less dilapidated cottages in which its inhabitants live. Open it to any page, and you will find something like this:
“A bucket of water stood by the hearth; in the top of it floated a wooden scrubbing-brush. The carpet had been rolled up in front of the fire and the stone floor between there and the door opening to the yard scrubbed clean. There was a smell of soap in the room, overlain by the musty, almost stifling odour which came from the bed. One of the curtains had been drawn across leaving a faint strip of light to fall through the remaining single pane on to the chair where his grandmother in the past had usually sat and on to the sofa with its leaking horsehair at the back of the room where silently, smoking his pipe, his grandfather normally reclined” (234).
See? Pleasant, vivid description which, on its own, is quite lovely, if often depressing. Storey extends this same eye for detail to the minutiae of his characters lives; accordingly, we are treated to such riveting happenings as Colin walking to the Park; Colin taking the bus to school; Colin sitting in a shack with his friends; Colin drinking milk at school; Colin watching people play football; Colin playing football while his father watches; Colin taking his two brothers on a walk; Colin visiting his grandparents; Colin going on a school trip to a small town for reasons unknown, during which he listens to his friend talk and watches a stream; Colin going to a movie; Colin riding a train; Colin catching a ride home from work on his friend’s motorcycle; Colin’s father building an air raid shelter; Colin helping with the dishes; Colin listening to his father talk to the next door neighbours; and so on. You get the picture: though this is a book about class struggle, and the slow, sad decline of a way of life in the wake of WWII and the sweeping changes which it ushered in or hastened, nobody would ever accuse Storey of sensationalism or melodrama. Though he does seem to be a naturalist of sorts, Theodore Dreiser he is not.

Truly, reading this novel requires patience. For its first 75% or so, nothing much happens to Colin or his family. Instead, Storey depicts the slow daily grind of a family living in poverty, and their struggles to educate their eldest son to the point where he might escape his father’s fate (and, one would imagine, pull his father out of it, too). Even as the narrative begins leaping through Colin’s youth in chunks of months, even years, it feels like we’re privy to every dreary minute of his existence. Sometimes, I swear it’s like we’re with him even while he’s sleeping. Things do pick up in the novel’s final act, as his forays into the world of adults involves him in some adult concerns, and he develops into an aimless, confused individual as he comes of age, torn between his allegiance to his family and his impulse to escape the life from which he becomes more alienated every day. In the end, Saville feels like a novel from a different time; though it’s set in the early-to-mid twentieth century, it more often feels like the 19th century, so that, even when Storey introduces more modern elements, such as World War II and automobiles, they feel almost anachronistic, the bulk of Colin’s life taking place in a world marked by a sort of bucolic poverty that denies the advance of time. Impressively detailed and deeply empathetic for the people being left behind by modernization, Saville is also a very conventional novel which, though better than the likes of Heat and Dust lacks the essential punch of In a Free State, G, or the two Farrell entries. I liked it but didn’t love it, and see no scenario in which I would ever read it again rather than, say, picking up Sons and Lovers for the third time.

[Brendon Oliver-Ewen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stars for the first half, two stars for the second. And to be truly precise, 0 stars for the last 100 pages.

This book had so much promise. The descriptions of life in an English working class coal mine town during and after the war are bleak and beautiful, creating rare insight into the life of a boy raised to rise above his station and get out. But in creating a life to get out, he is only enmeshed even further in a cycle of repaying all the debt incurred to get him out. Repayment which can only happen by staying within.

I think my reticence to rate the book any higher is that nearing the end, someone seems to have extinguished the light and shade, the levity, the joy. And with no joy the bleak becomes oppressive. The lead protagonist makes decisions which are unbelievable, as if to fuel the ideas the author is trying to present, rather then what the character would genuinely do. It’s as if the narrative takes great pleasure in sinking and sinking and sinking, and the slight spark offered in the final couple of pages is way too little, way too late.

Dickens it ain’t!!!

[El Marcapaginas Rojo Lourdes Rao · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hoy os traigo una novela que ha sido un descubrimiento para mí. Se trata de El ingenuo salvaje de David Storey, una historia que me ha sorprendido gratamente y que ha sabido conquistarme página tras página.
Pensé que sería un libro que me iba a costar un poco leer, ya que a pesar de que el rugby es un deporte que seguimos en casa, no estoy nada familiarizada con historias que giren en torno al deporte. Pero, todo lo contrario. El autor tiene una forma de escribir muy cercana, ligera que hace que la trama vaya a buen ritmo y consigue que sus personajes me parecieron cercanos con lo que conecte en seguida con cada uno de los personajes
La novela nos acerca a la vida de Arthur Machin, una joven promesa del rugby de los años 70 que vera como su vida cambia por completo de la noche a la mañana. Pero, esto no es todo, va mucho más allá. Es una crítica directa a la sociedad británica de la época, sumida en la hipocresía y el qué dirán.
Arthur pasara de ser un completo desconocido a un jugador de renombre con sus pros y sus contras. El precio de la fama, el poder de unos pocos, la pérdida de identidad y la manipulación, marcarán su carácter. Ver como su personalidad va cambiando a lo largo de la historia me ha recordado muchísimo a casos actuales de famosos que no han sabido llevar bien el dejar de ser anónimo, que tener derecho a todo y conseguir lo que quieren a base de dinero.
En esta novela también se nos habla de las relaciones personales, de cómo el poder de la fama hace que desconfíes y manipules a quien te rodea, dejando claro que el dinero no lo compra todo.
Las escenas relacionadas con el deporte están muy bien narradas, son bastante escasas, no muy técnicas por lo que no me han resultado nada pesadas. El autor, no se centra en el juego en sí, más bien nos cuenta que detrás del estrellato de un deportista no solo está su talento, sino el momento, las personas que manejan el club y la imagen del mismo jugador.
Con respecto a los personajes, están muy bien construidos, siendo un retrato complejo de la sociedad del momento y de las diferentes escalas sociales de la época. De los secundarios, me quedo con la señora Hammond. Su sufrimiento y miedo ha hecho que sea el personaje que más me ha calado.
Espero ver pronto la película de 1963, protagonizada por Richard Harris y Glenda Jackson que he visto que tiene muy buena puntuación en filmaffinity.
Sin duda, toda una sorpresa para mí, que recomiendo leer por su realismo a la hora de retratar el precio de la fama.
NOTA: 4/5

[Rafa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro vinculado a las versiones inglesas de "Saville" cuando debería estarlo a "This sporting Life" del mismo autor. Sinceramente no sé a quien acudir para subsanar este error pero si alguien lee esto y sabe como hacerlo... sólo darle las gracias.
El libro es la historia de un desencuentro. El viaje de un joven jugador de rugby que intenta hacerse un hueco en el mundo tratando de unir su destino a un ave herida.
Llegué al libro por mi afición al rugby pero la verdad es que a excepción del último capítulo, sólo está presente de refilón, por cierto es Rugby League no Rugby a 15 para aquellos que conozcan algo del tema. Sin embargo, es un libro que describe bien una época y una sociedad en pleno cambio.

[Rick Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.
What I found clever about the writing is how emotion is often shown indirectly—through ellipsis, throwaway comments, or small observations. You’re left to sense what people feel rather than being told.
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 will speak to anyone from a working-class background, especially in the North, who moved away from that life. 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.