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"I was the devil of a fellow, I was the lover of a married woman, I was taking out the daughter of one of the richest man in Warley, there wasn't a damn thing I couldn't do".
Ruthlessly ambitious, Joe Lampton rises swiftly from the petty bureaucracy of local government into the unfamiliar world of inherited wealth, fast cars and glamorous women. But the price of his success is high. Betrayal and tragedy strike as the original "angry young man" of the 1950s pursues his goals.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
82 people are currently reading
3304 people want to read
About the author
John Braine
36 books39 followersJohn Gerard Braine was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1922. He sprang to immediate fame in 1957 with publication of his first novel, Room at the Top, which was a critical success and a major bestseller in England and America and was adapted for the screen in an Oscar-winning 1959 film starring Simone Signoret and Laurence Harvey. His second novel, The Vodi (1959), met with mixed reviews and a disappointing reception, but was Braine’s favourite of his own works. His next book, Life at the Top (1962), a sequel to Room at the Top, sold well and was filmed in 1965.
Braine, who was commonly associated with what the British media dubbed the ‘Angry Young Men’ movement of working-class writers disenchanted with the traditional British class system, continued writing until his death in 1986, though as of 2013, all his works were out of print. Recently, there has been renewed interest in Braine’s work, with Valancourt Books’ reissues of Room at the Top and The Vodi, and a 2012 BBC miniseries adaptation of Room at the Top.
Braine, who was commonly associated with what the British media dubbed the ‘Angry Young Men’ movement of working-class writers disenchanted with the traditional British class system, continued writing until his death in 1986, though as of 2013, all his works were out of print. Recently, there has been renewed interest in Braine’s work, with Valancourt Books’ reissues of Room at the Top and The Vodi, and a 2012 BBC miniseries adaptation of Room at the Top.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 180 reviews
December 10, 2025
A Review in Seven Questions
1. Would I sleep with Joe Lampton? Yes.
2. Could I love Joe Lampton? Yes.
3. Would I get hurt? Definitely, yes.
4. Can I relate to those who love him? For sure.
5. Even Susan? Even her.
6. Would they believe me if I warned them off him? Not on your life.
7. Is this a tragedy? For all concerned.
X-rated by the British when the film came out, the book is as good if not even better and stands up to time as it tells the story of two love affairs occurring at once.
1. Would I sleep with Joe Lampton? Yes.
2. Could I love Joe Lampton? Yes.
3. Would I get hurt? Definitely, yes.
4. Can I relate to those who love him? For sure.
5. Even Susan? Even her.
6. Would they believe me if I warned them off him? Not on your life.
7. Is this a tragedy? For all concerned.
X-rated by the British when the film came out, the book is as good if not even better and stands up to time as it tells the story of two love affairs occurring at once.
August 30, 2018
This novel has astoundingly bad dialogue in it, all the way through to the bitter end, but it’s still a tough piece of British truth-telling. It’s about two things – class, and the possibilities of moving from the working class to the middle-class ( there’s a careful, excruciating listing of all the foodstuffs, clothing , drinks, modes of transport and social habits of each of the two classes – we learn, for instance, about the remarkable frequency and toleration of drunk driving in those days - how there was anyone left alive is a wonder); and sex, how men and women negotiate to get what they want, or often, what they can bear to put up with – how they shuffle the cards they’ve been dealt.
And it’s another indictment of the selfish male, which God knows, has been anatomized and filleted many times. But it’s also the joy of sex 1955-style, with some nude bathing in the sea, and at least one knee trembler. And it’s about the cruelty of sex, how the young are immutably more attractive than the middle aged (which in this novel is anyone over 34).
In this novel men are men and the women expect to be knocked about a bit. As for instance:
I took hold of her roughly, then slapped her hard on the face. She gave a little cry of surprise, then flew at me with her nails. I held her off easily.
“You’re not going,” I said, “and I’m not going to do what you asked me either. I love you, you silly bitch, and I’m the one who says what’s to be done. Now and in the future.”
Then there’s some sex, followed by
“You hurt me,” she said when I came to my sense afterwards, my whole body empty and exhausted. “You hurt me and you took all my clothes – look, I’m bleeding here – and here – and here. Oh Joe, I love you with all of me now, every little bit of me is yours. You won’t need her anymore, will you?”
She laughed. It was a low gurgling laugh. It was full of physical contentment.
Hmmm, I see now that I’ve just demonstrated that this novel is TERRIBLE. I mean to say, there’s your bad dialogue! But – er, it’s pretty good really. I mean, he’s not proud of himself about any of this stuff. He just knows that’s the way you have to do it. It’s not his world, he didn’t invent the rules. The blurbs will have you believe that our hero Joe Lampton is ruthlessly ambitious, destroying anyone in his path. Not at all, he’s the most agonized, doubting, hesitantly-ruthless young man you ever did meet. And the doubting and remorse is the best part of the book, and John Braine knew that was the point of it. There’s a Dark Night of the Soul section right at the end which is a real phantasmagoria.
I‘m chomping my way through a lot of novels I should have read years ago, and this was one of them, and at the end of it I thought hmmph, I should have read this years ago! So I said to myself : told you so! But you wouldn't listen would you. And I said okay okay, you made your point.
3.5 stars and a sticker saying “Warning! Contains scenes some feminists may find disturbing”
And it’s another indictment of the selfish male, which God knows, has been anatomized and filleted many times. But it’s also the joy of sex 1955-style, with some nude bathing in the sea, and at least one knee trembler. And it’s about the cruelty of sex, how the young are immutably more attractive than the middle aged (which in this novel is anyone over 34).
In this novel men are men and the women expect to be knocked about a bit. As for instance:
I took hold of her roughly, then slapped her hard on the face. She gave a little cry of surprise, then flew at me with her nails. I held her off easily.
“You’re not going,” I said, “and I’m not going to do what you asked me either. I love you, you silly bitch, and I’m the one who says what’s to be done. Now and in the future.”
Then there’s some sex, followed by
“You hurt me,” she said when I came to my sense afterwards, my whole body empty and exhausted. “You hurt me and you took all my clothes – look, I’m bleeding here – and here – and here. Oh Joe, I love you with all of me now, every little bit of me is yours. You won’t need her anymore, will you?”
She laughed. It was a low gurgling laugh. It was full of physical contentment.
Hmmm, I see now that I’ve just demonstrated that this novel is TERRIBLE. I mean to say, there’s your bad dialogue! But – er, it’s pretty good really. I mean, he’s not proud of himself about any of this stuff. He just knows that’s the way you have to do it. It’s not his world, he didn’t invent the rules. The blurbs will have you believe that our hero Joe Lampton is ruthlessly ambitious, destroying anyone in his path. Not at all, he’s the most agonized, doubting, hesitantly-ruthless young man you ever did meet. And the doubting and remorse is the best part of the book, and John Braine knew that was the point of it. There’s a Dark Night of the Soul section right at the end which is a real phantasmagoria.
I‘m chomping my way through a lot of novels I should have read years ago, and this was one of them, and at the end of it I thought hmmph, I should have read this years ago! So I said to myself : told you so! But you wouldn't listen would you. And I said okay okay, you made your point.
3.5 stars and a sticker saying “Warning! Contains scenes some feminists may find disturbing”
February 18, 2016
Joe Lampton was orphaned when a bomb killed his parents as they slept. His Aunt and Uncle raise him dutifully but his goal is escape and betterment--The Top. Money. Good Marriage. Great House. Great Sex. Not all necessarily from the same source, of course, but it would be nice to combine a few. So he makes his move by physically transporting himself to a new town, new job, and the tale begins.
Braine's prose drew me in from the start. He has a way of making Joe intriguing even when his motives and actions can be suspect. Joe is the narrator throughout and we see his evolution/devolution up close.
For all that, it gave me far more pleasure than the dressing gown
I have now, which was bought from Sulka's in Bond Street. Not that
I don't like the Sulka; it's the best, and I always wear the best. But
sometimes I feel uncomfortably aware that I'm forced to be a living
proof of the firm's prosperity, a sort of sandwich-board man. I've no
desire to be ill dressed; but I hate the knowledge that I daren't be
ill dressed if I want to. I bought the cheap rayon garment to please myself.;
I bought the expensive silk garment because always to wear clothes of
that quality is an unwritten term of my contract. And I shall never
be able to recapture that sensation of leisure and opulence and
sophistication which came over me that first afternoon in Warley
when I took off my jacket and collar and went into the bathroom
wearing a real dressing gown. (p 9)
Joe looks back and forth in his life and slowly reveals something I hadn't expected--insight into himself. But this does not seem to change his trajectory. He is a man who remains aimed at the Top and set to whatever steps he must take.
In our group discussion, one subject that rose frequently and vehemently was the treatment of women in the book. Is this Joe's attitude toward women? Is it the author's attitude? Does it also reflect to some degree a tone acceptable at the time this book was written (1957) and/or set (1952). Personally, I think it's some of all of the above. I also found this novel historically interesting because of the situation in Britain in the early 1950s, still very early in their post-war recovery.
All in all, I do recommend this book for it's excellent writing, interesting historical and sociological settings.
Braine's prose drew me in from the start. He has a way of making Joe intriguing even when his motives and actions can be suspect. Joe is the narrator throughout and we see his evolution/devolution up close.
For all that, it gave me far more pleasure than the dressing gown
I have now, which was bought from Sulka's in Bond Street. Not that
I don't like the Sulka; it's the best, and I always wear the best. But
sometimes I feel uncomfortably aware that I'm forced to be a living
proof of the firm's prosperity, a sort of sandwich-board man. I've no
desire to be ill dressed; but I hate the knowledge that I daren't be
ill dressed if I want to. I bought the cheap rayon garment to please myself.;
I bought the expensive silk garment because always to wear clothes of
that quality is an unwritten term of my contract. And I shall never
be able to recapture that sensation of leisure and opulence and
sophistication which came over me that first afternoon in Warley
when I took off my jacket and collar and went into the bathroom
wearing a real dressing gown. (p 9)
Joe looks back and forth in his life and slowly reveals something I hadn't expected--insight into himself. But this does not seem to change his trajectory. He is a man who remains aimed at the Top and set to whatever steps he must take.
In our group discussion, one subject that rose frequently and vehemently was the treatment of women in the book. Is this Joe's attitude toward women? Is it the author's attitude? Does it also reflect to some degree a tone acceptable at the time this book was written (1957) and/or set (1952). Personally, I think it's some of all of the above. I also found this novel historically interesting because of the situation in Britain in the early 1950s, still very early in their post-war recovery.
All in all, I do recommend this book for it's excellent writing, interesting historical and sociological settings.
December 1, 2020
Room at the Top combines time, theme, and style into an intriguing experience. It’s a book that looks into the inner mind of a brooding first-person male character, Joe Lampton, who is trying to make sense out of the life that he thought he could plan out completely and the life that he ends up living. Joe’s struggle for understanding is further complicated by the early 1950s setting when men saw themselves as anointed for success while women had no real choice but to live in subservient roles.
As a personal preference, I like novels with a first-person perspective. The writer practically steps aside and lets his character directly tell his story. It echoes other books of a similar style written by Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway; two writers that fill their pages with insights. I enjoyed hearing Joe’s inner voice contemplating and comprehending his experiences. It all felt very human and very real.
From today’s perspective, Room at the Top is a time capsule whose time we all keep trying to leave behind. And books such as this are necessary to remember so that we don’t lose track of where we are headed. However, there is one characteristic of this bygone time that I seriously regret not experiencing: the social obligation to drink whiskey-shots before lunch.
As a personal preference, I like novels with a first-person perspective. The writer practically steps aside and lets his character directly tell his story. It echoes other books of a similar style written by Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway; two writers that fill their pages with insights. I enjoyed hearing Joe’s inner voice contemplating and comprehending his experiences. It all felt very human and very real.
From today’s perspective, Room at the Top is a time capsule whose time we all keep trying to leave behind. And books such as this are necessary to remember so that we don’t lose track of where we are headed. However, there is one characteristic of this bygone time that I seriously regret not experiencing: the social obligation to drink whiskey-shots before lunch.
January 23, 2020
A gritty, cynical and credible book.
Room at the Top (1957) by John Braine still packs a heck of a punch. I’d wanted to read Room at the Top for a long time having watched the memorable 1959 film adaptation with Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret's Oscar winning performance. The film adaptation has stayed with me since I viewed it in the early 1980s, so I was gratified to discover that the book is every bit as good as I’d hoped.
Room at the Top is one of the best known examples of social realism, a literary style that flourished in Britain in the 1950s. The powerful picture of Dufton in Yorkshire - protagonist Joe Lampton’s hometown - is of a stale and stagnant place, whose inhabitants go mindlessly about their business. Recently demobbed, Joe escapes to the more prosperous and affluent nearby Warley, where he hopes to reinvent himself.
Room at the Top is set in the immediate post-World War 2 period when class boundaries were clearly defined and social mobility was difficult. In a time when the effects of World War 2 were still evident, it's hardly surprising that the luxuries afforded the wealthy were coveted. This spawned a generation of so-called Angry Young Men who resented how the world was stacked against them. For Joe Lampton, this dissatisfaction manifests itself as single minded ambition. Joe is acutely aware of every subtle income distinction and obsesses about it. He carefully notes which type of house is in which part of town and what the size and style signify. GoodReads friend Peter reminded me that the novel was written during the era of U and non-U - popularised by Nancy Mitford in 1954 which "unleashed an anxious national debate about English class-consciousness".
Room at the Top has a very compelling narrative, however what elevates this book to classic status, is that this page-turner of a story is aligned to a pitch perfect evocation of life in a provincial Yorkshire town, in the late 1940s. This era, characterised by rapidly altering morals and shifting class boundaries, is superbly captured in a novel that still retains its power and ability to shock. Needless to say, Joe’s attitude to women is unreconstructed and probably reflects what was commonplace or acceptable at the time Room at the Top was written (1957) and set (1946). It’s instructive to reflect that this was a book by one of the “Angry Young Men” rather than one of the “Angry Young People”.
One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is how the anger of “angry young man” John Braine, whilst aimed at the unfairness of wealth inequality, doesn't seek to tear it down, or replace it. This is no Marxist tract. Joe doesn't want to beat them, he wants to join them. So what we get, in a powerful first person narrative, is Joe’s predatory materialism delivered in a brazenly cynical narrative. He's a proto-Thacherite.
The tragedy at the book’s heart results in the completion of Joe’s metamorphosis. In the final pages Joe talks about “Joe Lampton” in the third person, which is a powerful technique....
"….I hated Joe Lampton, but he looked and sounded very sure of himself sitting at my desk in my skin; he’d come to stay, this was no flying visit."
If, like me, you’ve been meaning to read this book for years, then delay no more, it’s a classic. If you’re interested in social trends, and post-war fiction, then read it. Actually, just read it.
5/5
John Minton's cover art from the first edition was restored and used on the new edition by Valancourt Books in 2013.
A Penguin edition published to tie in with the 1959 film adaptation
Room at the Top (1957) by John Braine still packs a heck of a punch. I’d wanted to read Room at the Top for a long time having watched the memorable 1959 film adaptation with Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret's Oscar winning performance. The film adaptation has stayed with me since I viewed it in the early 1980s, so I was gratified to discover that the book is every bit as good as I’d hoped.
Room at the Top is one of the best known examples of social realism, a literary style that flourished in Britain in the 1950s. The powerful picture of Dufton in Yorkshire - protagonist Joe Lampton’s hometown - is of a stale and stagnant place, whose inhabitants go mindlessly about their business. Recently demobbed, Joe escapes to the more prosperous and affluent nearby Warley, where he hopes to reinvent himself.
Room at the Top is set in the immediate post-World War 2 period when class boundaries were clearly defined and social mobility was difficult. In a time when the effects of World War 2 were still evident, it's hardly surprising that the luxuries afforded the wealthy were coveted. This spawned a generation of so-called Angry Young Men who resented how the world was stacked against them. For Joe Lampton, this dissatisfaction manifests itself as single minded ambition. Joe is acutely aware of every subtle income distinction and obsesses about it. He carefully notes which type of house is in which part of town and what the size and style signify. GoodReads friend Peter reminded me that the novel was written during the era of U and non-U - popularised by Nancy Mitford in 1954 which "unleashed an anxious national debate about English class-consciousness".
Room at the Top has a very compelling narrative, however what elevates this book to classic status, is that this page-turner of a story is aligned to a pitch perfect evocation of life in a provincial Yorkshire town, in the late 1940s. This era, characterised by rapidly altering morals and shifting class boundaries, is superbly captured in a novel that still retains its power and ability to shock. Needless to say, Joe’s attitude to women is unreconstructed and probably reflects what was commonplace or acceptable at the time Room at the Top was written (1957) and set (1946). It’s instructive to reflect that this was a book by one of the “Angry Young Men” rather than one of the “Angry Young People”.
One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is how the anger of “angry young man” John Braine, whilst aimed at the unfairness of wealth inequality, doesn't seek to tear it down, or replace it. This is no Marxist tract. Joe doesn't want to beat them, he wants to join them. So what we get, in a powerful first person narrative, is Joe’s predatory materialism delivered in a brazenly cynical narrative. He's a proto-Thacherite.
The tragedy at the book’s heart results in the completion of Joe’s metamorphosis. In the final pages Joe talks about “Joe Lampton” in the third person, which is a powerful technique....
"….I hated Joe Lampton, but he looked and sounded very sure of himself sitting at my desk in my skin; he’d come to stay, this was no flying visit."
If, like me, you’ve been meaning to read this book for years, then delay no more, it’s a classic. If you’re interested in social trends, and post-war fiction, then read it. Actually, just read it.
5/5
John Minton's cover art from the first edition was restored and used on the new edition by Valancourt Books in 2013.
A Penguin edition published to tie in with the 1959 film adaptation
January 6, 2018
Published in 1957, this debut novel is an example of the ‘Angry Young Men’ fiction of the 1950’s and 1960’s. These novels generally involve themes of class, resentment and anger and the main character in this novel, Joe Lampton, personifies all these feelings. Lampton comes from the Northern mill town of Dufton. His parents were killed in air raid, leaving him to be brought up by an aunt. When we meet him, he has returned from the war, he is twenty five, and is about to leave the confines of his earlier life for a new job in Warley. The job is obviously a step up and Joe is all for a step up and a step away... In fact, he is ruthlessly ambitious, desperate to leave his previous drab surroundings and the poverty of his youth.
Once in Warley, Joe lodges with Cedric and Joan Thompson, who live in a nice area – the ‘t’top,’ of the title. Once installed in his nice room, with the dressing gown his aunt called, ‘a waste of money,’ Joe sets out to make his mark on Warley. We see him as he embarks on his attempts to improve his lot; joining the local amateur dramatic society, tackling his new job and finding how far he can go… Before long, Joe is seriously involved with two women – the married, older woman, Alice and the young, beautiful and innocent, Susan, whose father is wealthy and influential. The fact that Susan is out of his league makes her all the more alluring; the forbidden fruit that is beyond his dreams.
However, it is obvious that Joe is both handsome and intelligent. He is successful at work and with women, making him dangerous and, before long, coming to the attention of his ‘betters.’ This novel perfectly encapsulates that narrow minded, drab and dreary, post war England. The sight of a huge spread of food, laid out at a party, is still astonishing to Joe, who is used to ‘making do and mending’, rather than excess of any kind. Everything is limited – ambition, hope, dreams – and everyone is expected to keep in their place. Yes, many of the views, and behaviours, expressed in this book really jar now, especially the casual words of sexism and violence. However, this really is an interesting portrait of an era and of the novels which showed that anger with an order, and a world, which was soon to change. A very interesting read and a novel I have meant to read for a long time.
Once in Warley, Joe lodges with Cedric and Joan Thompson, who live in a nice area – the ‘t’top,’ of the title. Once installed in his nice room, with the dressing gown his aunt called, ‘a waste of money,’ Joe sets out to make his mark on Warley. We see him as he embarks on his attempts to improve his lot; joining the local amateur dramatic society, tackling his new job and finding how far he can go… Before long, Joe is seriously involved with two women – the married, older woman, Alice and the young, beautiful and innocent, Susan, whose father is wealthy and influential. The fact that Susan is out of his league makes her all the more alluring; the forbidden fruit that is beyond his dreams.
However, it is obvious that Joe is both handsome and intelligent. He is successful at work and with women, making him dangerous and, before long, coming to the attention of his ‘betters.’ This novel perfectly encapsulates that narrow minded, drab and dreary, post war England. The sight of a huge spread of food, laid out at a party, is still astonishing to Joe, who is used to ‘making do and mending’, rather than excess of any kind. Everything is limited – ambition, hope, dreams – and everyone is expected to keep in their place. Yes, many of the views, and behaviours, expressed in this book really jar now, especially the casual words of sexism and violence. However, this really is an interesting portrait of an era and of the novels which showed that anger with an order, and a world, which was soon to change. A very interesting read and a novel I have meant to read for a long time.
February 26, 2025
This good old (1957) nostalgic winter's night read had me gripped from start to finish. John Braine's gritty post-war British characters are astonishingly true, their strengths believable, their defects authentic, their dialogue the real McCoy.
After studying accountancy as a Prisoner of War, ex-serviceman Joe Lampton leaves his northern English hometown of Dufton, where he grew up a poor orphan after his parents were killed in an air raid.
Chasing a new life, Joe arrives in nearby Warley to commence his promising new job at the Municipal Treasury. Ambitious to break the archetypal working-class mould, Joe runs with the fast-changing times and sets his sights high, driven by visions of white-collar advancement.
He rents a room from the middle-class Thompson's, a couple in Warley's well-to-do quarter 'The Top' (t'top, in native dialectic terms). Joe Lampton's 'room at the top' is a metaphor for his drive to leave behind the blue-collar 'zombies' of his old life and native town.
The kindly Thompsons, deprived of a son who died at war, take Joe under their wing and treat him like family. They introduce him to their amateur dramatic society where, at weekly evening rehearsals, he befriends childlike Susan Brown, the sole daughter of an influential Warley businessman. Though betrothed to flash Jack Wales, heir to a local family fortune, Susan also quietly succumbs to Joe's pushy wooing. She remains naïve of his motive being partly frivolous opportunism, in his ruthless quest for social elevation, and partly blokey one upmanship against the self-important Jack Wales.
At these same weekly rehearsals, Joe also becomes acquainted with the older, married Alice Aisgill, who usually gets the company's leading lady roles. Though she initially plays the ice queen, Alice and Joe soon find mutual stimulation in intelligent conversation, away from the others, after rehearsals, in the nearby pub. They begin a covert sexual relationship, enacted mostly in the borrowed flat of one of Alice's actress girlfriends. One secret weekend, at a country cottage, smooth talking Joe convinces Alice this is more than physical. She is won over.
Though Joe does love Alice more passionately, he has also, meanwhile, successfully seduced the wide-eyed and willing young Susan Brown, who falls pregnant.
As rumour erupts of Joe's adulterous affair with Alice, his reputation is compromised, threatening his prospects in Warley. His only option of keeping Alice would be elopement with her, away from her husband and Warley, leaving behind Susan and his career opportunities.
Meanwhile with scandal looming, Susan's father, concerned for his family reputation, summonses Joe to a private business meeting. He presses Joe do the decent thing by marrying the pregnant Susan, adding, for incentive, a job offer worth a thousand a pounds year. The one stipulation is that Joe sever all ties with Alice Aisgill.
Forced to choose between love and money, Joe must sacrifice one relationship to retain the other. The outcome for the devastated woman he doesn't choose is tragic. Guilt ridden and remorseful, Joe turns to drink in a rage of self-loathing.
Room at the Top's hero intermittently morphs into anti-hero throughout, via the twists and turns of his wrestling conscience and ego. Empathising with him, we also recognise his shortcomings too. His older lover, Alice Aisgill, is entrancing, enigmatic and breathtakingly believable. She was immortalised on the big screen by the wonderful Simon Signoret, whose smouldering portrayal earned her an Academy Ward (1959), then again on the small screen by the fabulous Maxine Peake (2012), that miniseries winning a BAFTA.
In the same period bundle as Stan Barstow's A Kind of Loving and Nell Dunn's Up the Junction (both similarly cinematised), this was a genre that gained swift popularity then achieved a sort of cult status as it just as rapidly dated. The post-war era, one of rapidly altering morals and class boundaries, is superbly captured in these then controversial novels. This is one of the best.
No great classic, in my opinion, but a broody, meaty read with a granite edge that leaves an indelible impression.
Quite unforgettable.
After studying accountancy as a Prisoner of War, ex-serviceman Joe Lampton leaves his northern English hometown of Dufton, where he grew up a poor orphan after his parents were killed in an air raid.
Chasing a new life, Joe arrives in nearby Warley to commence his promising new job at the Municipal Treasury. Ambitious to break the archetypal working-class mould, Joe runs with the fast-changing times and sets his sights high, driven by visions of white-collar advancement.
He rents a room from the middle-class Thompson's, a couple in Warley's well-to-do quarter 'The Top' (t'top, in native dialectic terms). Joe Lampton's 'room at the top' is a metaphor for his drive to leave behind the blue-collar 'zombies' of his old life and native town.
The kindly Thompsons, deprived of a son who died at war, take Joe under their wing and treat him like family. They introduce him to their amateur dramatic society where, at weekly evening rehearsals, he befriends childlike Susan Brown, the sole daughter of an influential Warley businessman. Though betrothed to flash Jack Wales, heir to a local family fortune, Susan also quietly succumbs to Joe's pushy wooing. She remains naïve of his motive being partly frivolous opportunism, in his ruthless quest for social elevation, and partly blokey one upmanship against the self-important Jack Wales.
At these same weekly rehearsals, Joe also becomes acquainted with the older, married Alice Aisgill, who usually gets the company's leading lady roles. Though she initially plays the ice queen, Alice and Joe soon find mutual stimulation in intelligent conversation, away from the others, after rehearsals, in the nearby pub. They begin a covert sexual relationship, enacted mostly in the borrowed flat of one of Alice's actress girlfriends. One secret weekend, at a country cottage, smooth talking Joe convinces Alice this is more than physical. She is won over.
Though Joe does love Alice more passionately, he has also, meanwhile, successfully seduced the wide-eyed and willing young Susan Brown, who falls pregnant.
As rumour erupts of Joe's adulterous affair with Alice, his reputation is compromised, threatening his prospects in Warley. His only option of keeping Alice would be elopement with her, away from her husband and Warley, leaving behind Susan and his career opportunities.
Meanwhile with scandal looming, Susan's father, concerned for his family reputation, summonses Joe to a private business meeting. He presses Joe do the decent thing by marrying the pregnant Susan, adding, for incentive, a job offer worth a thousand a pounds year. The one stipulation is that Joe sever all ties with Alice Aisgill.
Forced to choose between love and money, Joe must sacrifice one relationship to retain the other. The outcome for the devastated woman he doesn't choose is tragic. Guilt ridden and remorseful, Joe turns to drink in a rage of self-loathing.
Room at the Top's hero intermittently morphs into anti-hero throughout, via the twists and turns of his wrestling conscience and ego. Empathising with him, we also recognise his shortcomings too. His older lover, Alice Aisgill, is entrancing, enigmatic and breathtakingly believable. She was immortalised on the big screen by the wonderful Simon Signoret, whose smouldering portrayal earned her an Academy Ward (1959), then again on the small screen by the fabulous Maxine Peake (2012), that miniseries winning a BAFTA.
In the same period bundle as Stan Barstow's A Kind of Loving and Nell Dunn's Up the Junction (both similarly cinematised), this was a genre that gained swift popularity then achieved a sort of cult status as it just as rapidly dated. The post-war era, one of rapidly altering morals and class boundaries, is superbly captured in these then controversial novels. This is one of the best.
No great classic, in my opinion, but a broody, meaty read with a granite edge that leaves an indelible impression.
Quite unforgettable.
July 11, 2017
As I took her roughly into my arms I felt loneliness come over me, real as the damp churchyard smell of the grass, melancholy as the sound of the beck in the little glen below us. I felt heavy as Sunday, as if time might drag me into a world like a bad engraving, still and dark and dull and lost.
October 22, 2013
Verdict: A morality tale for the modern age chock-full of insight so unflinching that even after half a century it will still make you flinch.
I don’t quite know what to say about “Room at the Top” except that I can see how it might grate with even the most casual of contemporary feminist. For my part I can’t agree. Not because I hate women, but because I feel this view rather misses the forest for the trees. More on that later, though. First, a brief overview. I can’t imagine I’ll have a huge pool of fellow readers with this one, though the Brits among you might recall recent a BBC mini. I found my copy in an especially eccentric pop—up used book booth and it scored low on the recognition test with the nosy parade of museum public to whom I act as receptionist by day (crime fighter by night, naturally).
‘Room at the Top’ tells the story of Joe Lampton, an ambitious Geordie, and his post-war efforts to make something of himself in the brave new capitalist world. When the book begins he has left his hideous hometown of dreary Dufton on account of its afore mentioned hideousness and the fact that his house (with parents en situ) was levelled by a doodlebug, and moved to fancy-pants Warley where he has found work as an accountant. He soon espies a fancy man with a fancy car and a fancy girl and decides that, lower middle class background or not, one day all this will be his.
He starts with the fancy girl ‘cause he spots her first in a local theatre production. Her name is Susan. She is pretty, he Daddy is rich and she has almost certainly never seen a penis. She is perfect. Joe joins her society theatre troop where he also meets Alice. She is older and rather snippy but quite fit and, as a semi-unhappily married woman, has almost certainly seen a penis. More astonishingly, Joe finds himself holding actual conversations with her instead of smacking her ass or scheming around her like she was the Kohinoor which is new and confusing for him, god bless.
But back to Susan, her toff boyfriend goes back to Oxbridge and Joe can move in which he does with speed and agility, revealing himself as an early prophet of The Game (there’s no point in blaming modern times, ladies, this bs had been around for a while). Susan falls for it but is still reluctant to break her life-long cock embargo so Joe and Alice start up an affair.
Spoilers seep in here and flood quickly
Theirs is more proper relationship with emotional investment and a smidgen of personal growth but in the end Joe needs Susan to be the fancy woman standing next to his fancy car so he Super-Negs hers and manages to get her pregnant. Her Dad honest to goodness offers him money to leave forever but he declines which is good because it was all a test! Instead he offers Joe his blighted daughter in marriage and fancy job with his company. Alice takes this badly and kills herself gruesomely with her 1940’s automobile (I’m not kidding, it was bad. I’ve read Madame Bovary and I’d *still* have opted for arsenic). Joe is distraught, goes out, gets pissed (in the UK sense) and shags a stranger but then goes on to get married and become a captain of industry, eventually penning this memoir, the end.
Spoilers have ended
On the surface I can see how this presents as a mean novel with a bad moral but I’ve decided I quite like it. True, while reading I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Some bits certainly stuck in my throat, but I still found it fascinating. Simply put, ‘Room at the Top’ is a Bizarro version of the American Dream; an evil ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying’. This makes it unique but also honest. Joe, though empirically horrible, never ceases to be sympathetic and this can only be down to his own brutally unfiltered account of his actions. He’s ambitious and there’s not supposed to be anything wrong with that but the results of his actions speak differently and his confusion at this is sincere. He may escape with only the positive consequences of his actions but this isn’t a victory so much as a lack of epiphany.
It also opens up his experience to speak of this new post war modern world at large. The class system is breaking apart. Grocers and mill owners are now the ones building houses and throwing balls. Disposable income is there for the taking and just because your father worked in the mines doesn’t mean you can’t eventually make it into the House of Commons. Joe is a good kid. He loves his parents. He’s hilarious with his Dufton buddy. He earned his accountancy certificate studying as a POW. I don’t mean to absolve him of all personal blame here, but there is definitely an aspect of nature twisted by the new nurture. As I’ve said before, it’s this ‘through the looking glass’ perspective of the heroic trope of ‘self-made mad’ that I find so interesting. That and the attitude towards ladies.
To simply find the mad-men mentality towards the fairer sex insulting would be to overlook the rare jewel offered by this prose; an honest assessment of the effect of female beauty. Culturally, we are saturated with female beauty. In a world where even the women flogging us Rivita and toilet paper (not simultaneously) are skin-glowingly perfect it’s easy to accept beauty as the inalienable right of any woman upon whom we are expected to gaze. Hollywood may lead the way in this today but books were there first. I’m happy to forgive most instances (princesses in fairy tales and the like) but in truth, in reality, beauty in a woman is a rare and mind-altering thing and not the bog-standard minimum for anyone daring to be loved.
‘Room at the Top’, quite refreshingly, acknowledges this. Throughout the book Joe rates the ladies of his acquaintance on a charming scale of 1-10. It may sound crass but there is a truth in this that does us no favours to ignore; namely female beauty can be (and will be) commoditized into a status symbol. Joe assesses Susan’s beauty with the same quantitative admiration that he would bestow on a Rolex Submariner and wants her for precisely the same reasons. She is the most beautiful girl in town and… (I’m just going to let Gaston take it from here)
‘That makes her the best! And don’t I deserve the best?’
So there you go, we’ve also now revealed hither-to unknown wisdom in Beauty and the Beast. This book may be a product of its time in places. The ass-pinched secretary may be a thing of the past thanks to sexual harassment lawsuits but there is no escaping the ‘beautiful woman as luxury item’ reality of the world. It is hard-wired in the male brain, often linked more with competitiveness than love or even lust. It’s one of those quirks of biology and it is no good pretending it’s something only bad people do lest we hurt the feelings of the average ovary holder. In truth I reckon it’s inconvenient all around from the genetic lottery winners treated liked Faberge eggs to the men from whom the madness emanates. We’re all in this together.
And there you have it. Far from being antiquated and narrow-minded I found ‘Room at the Top’ to be cannily perceptive. Don’t let the period costume fool you, this book has aged well and retains full relevance. I’m rating it a 3 but don’t let that put you off. If the rating seems low it is because this excellent morality tale is still a morality tale meaning that, not unlike the talented landscape painters of the French Academy, it is excluded by the simple fact of its genre from the ranks of high literature (says me, that’s who). Fascinating, clear-sighted, unique, all these apply to Braine’s book but it is a fancy fable. Characters illustrate lessons instead of learning them, making ‘Room at the Top’ instructive rather than immersive and this binds my star-giving hand. It is a brilliant book of frank insight, though, and definitely worth a read.
I don’t quite know what to say about “Room at the Top” except that I can see how it might grate with even the most casual of contemporary feminist. For my part I can’t agree. Not because I hate women, but because I feel this view rather misses the forest for the trees. More on that later, though. First, a brief overview. I can’t imagine I’ll have a huge pool of fellow readers with this one, though the Brits among you might recall recent a BBC mini. I found my copy in an especially eccentric pop—up used book booth and it scored low on the recognition test with the nosy parade of museum public to whom I act as receptionist by day (crime fighter by night, naturally).
‘Room at the Top’ tells the story of Joe Lampton, an ambitious Geordie, and his post-war efforts to make something of himself in the brave new capitalist world. When the book begins he has left his hideous hometown of dreary Dufton on account of its afore mentioned hideousness and the fact that his house (with parents en situ) was levelled by a doodlebug, and moved to fancy-pants Warley where he has found work as an accountant. He soon espies a fancy man with a fancy car and a fancy girl and decides that, lower middle class background or not, one day all this will be his.
He starts with the fancy girl ‘cause he spots her first in a local theatre production. Her name is Susan. She is pretty, he Daddy is rich and she has almost certainly never seen a penis. She is perfect. Joe joins her society theatre troop where he also meets Alice. She is older and rather snippy but quite fit and, as a semi-unhappily married woman, has almost certainly seen a penis. More astonishingly, Joe finds himself holding actual conversations with her instead of smacking her ass or scheming around her like she was the Kohinoor which is new and confusing for him, god bless.
But back to Susan, her toff boyfriend goes back to Oxbridge and Joe can move in which he does with speed and agility, revealing himself as an early prophet of The Game (there’s no point in blaming modern times, ladies, this bs had been around for a while). Susan falls for it but is still reluctant to break her life-long cock embargo so Joe and Alice start up an affair.
Spoilers seep in here and flood quickly
Theirs is more proper relationship with emotional investment and a smidgen of personal growth but in the end Joe needs Susan to be the fancy woman standing next to his fancy car so he Super-Negs hers and manages to get her pregnant. Her Dad honest to goodness offers him money to leave forever but he declines which is good because it was all a test! Instead he offers Joe his blighted daughter in marriage and fancy job with his company. Alice takes this badly and kills herself gruesomely with her 1940’s automobile (I’m not kidding, it was bad. I’ve read Madame Bovary and I’d *still* have opted for arsenic). Joe is distraught, goes out, gets pissed (in the UK sense) and shags a stranger but then goes on to get married and become a captain of industry, eventually penning this memoir, the end.
Spoilers have ended
On the surface I can see how this presents as a mean novel with a bad moral but I’ve decided I quite like it. True, while reading I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Some bits certainly stuck in my throat, but I still found it fascinating. Simply put, ‘Room at the Top’ is a Bizarro version of the American Dream; an evil ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying’. This makes it unique but also honest. Joe, though empirically horrible, never ceases to be sympathetic and this can only be down to his own brutally unfiltered account of his actions. He’s ambitious and there’s not supposed to be anything wrong with that but the results of his actions speak differently and his confusion at this is sincere. He may escape with only the positive consequences of his actions but this isn’t a victory so much as a lack of epiphany.
It also opens up his experience to speak of this new post war modern world at large. The class system is breaking apart. Grocers and mill owners are now the ones building houses and throwing balls. Disposable income is there for the taking and just because your father worked in the mines doesn’t mean you can’t eventually make it into the House of Commons. Joe is a good kid. He loves his parents. He’s hilarious with his Dufton buddy. He earned his accountancy certificate studying as a POW. I don’t mean to absolve him of all personal blame here, but there is definitely an aspect of nature twisted by the new nurture. As I’ve said before, it’s this ‘through the looking glass’ perspective of the heroic trope of ‘self-made mad’ that I find so interesting. That and the attitude towards ladies.
To simply find the mad-men mentality towards the fairer sex insulting would be to overlook the rare jewel offered by this prose; an honest assessment of the effect of female beauty. Culturally, we are saturated with female beauty. In a world where even the women flogging us Rivita and toilet paper (not simultaneously) are skin-glowingly perfect it’s easy to accept beauty as the inalienable right of any woman upon whom we are expected to gaze. Hollywood may lead the way in this today but books were there first. I’m happy to forgive most instances (princesses in fairy tales and the like) but in truth, in reality, beauty in a woman is a rare and mind-altering thing and not the bog-standard minimum for anyone daring to be loved.
‘Room at the Top’, quite refreshingly, acknowledges this. Throughout the book Joe rates the ladies of his acquaintance on a charming scale of 1-10. It may sound crass but there is a truth in this that does us no favours to ignore; namely female beauty can be (and will be) commoditized into a status symbol. Joe assesses Susan’s beauty with the same quantitative admiration that he would bestow on a Rolex Submariner and wants her for precisely the same reasons. She is the most beautiful girl in town and… (I’m just going to let Gaston take it from here)
‘That makes her the best! And don’t I deserve the best?’
So there you go, we’ve also now revealed hither-to unknown wisdom in Beauty and the Beast. This book may be a product of its time in places. The ass-pinched secretary may be a thing of the past thanks to sexual harassment lawsuits but there is no escaping the ‘beautiful woman as luxury item’ reality of the world. It is hard-wired in the male brain, often linked more with competitiveness than love or even lust. It’s one of those quirks of biology and it is no good pretending it’s something only bad people do lest we hurt the feelings of the average ovary holder. In truth I reckon it’s inconvenient all around from the genetic lottery winners treated liked Faberge eggs to the men from whom the madness emanates. We’re all in this together.
And there you have it. Far from being antiquated and narrow-minded I found ‘Room at the Top’ to be cannily perceptive. Don’t let the period costume fool you, this book has aged well and retains full relevance. I’m rating it a 3 but don’t let that put you off. If the rating seems low it is because this excellent morality tale is still a morality tale meaning that, not unlike the talented landscape painters of the French Academy, it is excluded by the simple fact of its genre from the ranks of high literature (says me, that’s who). Fascinating, clear-sighted, unique, all these apply to Braine’s book but it is a fancy fable. Characters illustrate lessons instead of learning them, making ‘Room at the Top’ instructive rather than immersive and this binds my star-giving hand. It is a brilliant book of frank insight, though, and definitely worth a read.
July 14, 2015
Written in 1957, but set a little earlier, this is the story of a shameless social climber.
Orphaned Joe was raised by his working class aunt and uncle in a grim northern industrial town. Whilst a PoW, he studied for accountancy qualifications and after the war moves to a more prosperous town. He lodges with a well-to-do middle aged couple, gets involved with the local amateur dramatic group ands sets about bettering himself (whilst ensuring he gets plenty of sex too - it was probably pretty racy for its time).
He considers the cost, quality and availability of everything, including women, with disarming honesty to the reader, though rarely to those he meets in the story. He is very manipulative and aware of the fact, yet despite this, there is enough charm to draw the reader into collusion.
*** SPOILERS BELOW ****
It is only as all his plotting seems to be coming to fruition that there is a glimpse of any remorse, and the only inkling of any unselfishness is just before that, when it looks as if everything is hopeless.
I feel a little guilty for enjoying this book as much as I did. Perhaps it's just as well I've never met anyone like Joe in real life?
Orphaned Joe was raised by his working class aunt and uncle in a grim northern industrial town. Whilst a PoW, he studied for accountancy qualifications and after the war moves to a more prosperous town. He lodges with a well-to-do middle aged couple, gets involved with the local amateur dramatic group ands sets about bettering himself (whilst ensuring he gets plenty of sex too - it was probably pretty racy for its time).
He considers the cost, quality and availability of everything, including women, with disarming honesty to the reader, though rarely to those he meets in the story. He is very manipulative and aware of the fact, yet despite this, there is enough charm to draw the reader into collusion.
*** SPOILERS BELOW ****
It is only as all his plotting seems to be coming to fruition that there is a glimpse of any remorse, and the only inkling of any unselfishness is just before that, when it looks as if everything is hopeless.
I feel a little guilty for enjoying this book as much as I did. Perhaps it's just as well I've never met anyone like Joe in real life?
August 2, 2011
Novel set in post-war Northern England is like a time capsule into a past world where even the educated working classes faced limited opportunities unless they demonstrated the rare avarice to try and climb socially via marriage - which forms the basis of the narrator's quest. If the amount of alcohol consumed by rich and poor alike through the process of this story fails to surprise (this is England, after all), then the degree of pre-marital, extra-marital, passing and unprotected sex may shock some who (like me) thought that somehow people didn't.... copulate quite so often in pre-pill days. Then again, it's a novel.
Comments below this one about the narrator's sexism are entirely appropriate, except that they come from the benefit of hindsight. Room at the Top is telling it as the author, John Braine, saw it at the time - and the treatment of, and subsequently the behavior of, the women is not desperately different than those in, for example, This Sporting Life, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning or Angry Young Men. Narrators are often confused with novelists, and we sometimes want our "heroes" to act with far more heroism. But such stories are for children, with their princesses and fairly tale endings. This is a story of thing as they once were, retroactive views of equality (of gender, class, sexual orientation or, not that it is touched in this book, race) be damned. Joe climbs to the top the only way he knows how, of the time and at the time. You don't have to love him to appreciate his story, and what it tells us about a world that has changed in many, if not all, ways.
Comments below this one about the narrator's sexism are entirely appropriate, except that they come from the benefit of hindsight. Room at the Top is telling it as the author, John Braine, saw it at the time - and the treatment of, and subsequently the behavior of, the women is not desperately different than those in, for example, This Sporting Life, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning or Angry Young Men. Narrators are often confused with novelists, and we sometimes want our "heroes" to act with far more heroism. But such stories are for children, with their princesses and fairly tale endings. This is a story of thing as they once were, retroactive views of equality (of gender, class, sexual orientation or, not that it is touched in this book, race) be damned. Joe climbs to the top the only way he knows how, of the time and at the time. You don't have to love him to appreciate his story, and what it tells us about a world that has changed in many, if not all, ways.
September 19, 2008
It’s fifty years since A Room At The Top first appeared. Against a backdrop of post-war Britain, a period when people really did believe that a new future, a different kind of society was just around the corner, Joe Lampton, born January 1921, aspired to social and economic elevation. Though competent and already promoted, as a local government officer in a grubby northern English town, with spare time interests in amateur dramatics, cigarettes and beer, even he himself rated his prospects of success as very poor.
But Joe’s other passion was the ladies. Two in particular caught his eye. Alice Aisgarth was married, older than him, and had a local reputation for being a bit “forward”. Basically she wanted love and passion to light up her dull, unhappy life with excitement. Susan Brown was a different prospect entirely, being nineteen, virginal and daughter of a rich businessman. If Joe Lampton could never work his way to wealth, he might just be able to marry it. His problems arose out of Susan’s desire to remain pure during their courtship, a position that meant Joe had to continue seeing Alice to satisfy his needs. Further complications arose when Susan relented and fell immediately pregnant.
Well Joe achieved his goal. He and Susan married and he attained what he had sought all along, a meal ticket for life. He was not entirely without conscience, however. So when the rejected Alice, who deeply loved him, is killed in a car crash after a drunken night trying to drown her sorrows, Joe Lampton does suffer some remorse. But eventually, like many social climbers, he achieves his heights by trampling on others.
What remains enduringly intriguing about Room At The Top is its portrayal of British society’s obsession with social class. Joe perceives his best chance of social elevation is to marry money. And, in 2007, I re-read this novel in a week when a United Kingdom report declared that current day social class differences were widening, whilst opportunities for social mobility are actually decreasing. So John Braine’s novel is also a social document. The book is very much of its own time. It reminds us, for instance, that in the 1950s everyone smoked – and smoked a lot. Men drank pints in the pub – some of which did not even admit women. Homosexuality was not only not tolerated, it was illegal, though remained visible. Some of the recorded individual aspiration now seems nothing less than quaint. Alice Aisgarth, for instance, declares that she would like to sleep with Joe. “Truly sleep,” she qualifies, “in a big bed with a feather mattress and brass rails and a porcelain chamber pot underneath it.” In the 1950s, most north of England houses did not have bathrooms and the potties were usually enamel.
But it is in the area of social class that A Room At The Top is bitingly and enduringly apt. Joe Lampton believes he lacks the capacity to succeed, lacks the necessary background, the poise, the breeding. He sees himself as essentially vulgar and possesses no talents which might compensate for this drawback. His rival for Susan Brown’s affections, however, is one John Wales. He is studying for a science degree at Cambridge, and thus acquiring not only the knowledge which will ensure that he will become the managing director of the family firm, but will also endow the polish of manner, the habit of command, the calm superiority of bearing, the attributes of a gentleman.
Fifty years on, we might change an odd word, and the family firm might now be multi-national, but the spirit of contemporary Britain’s class system is arguably the same. And so despite the aspiration for and perceived attainment of social change in post-war Britain, Room At The Top, juxtaposed with recent evidence, reminds us that very little, if anything, has changed – except for the cigarettes and the chamber pots, of course. Oh, and we might now also prefer lager.
But Joe’s other passion was the ladies. Two in particular caught his eye. Alice Aisgarth was married, older than him, and had a local reputation for being a bit “forward”. Basically she wanted love and passion to light up her dull, unhappy life with excitement. Susan Brown was a different prospect entirely, being nineteen, virginal and daughter of a rich businessman. If Joe Lampton could never work his way to wealth, he might just be able to marry it. His problems arose out of Susan’s desire to remain pure during their courtship, a position that meant Joe had to continue seeing Alice to satisfy his needs. Further complications arose when Susan relented and fell immediately pregnant.
Well Joe achieved his goal. He and Susan married and he attained what he had sought all along, a meal ticket for life. He was not entirely without conscience, however. So when the rejected Alice, who deeply loved him, is killed in a car crash after a drunken night trying to drown her sorrows, Joe Lampton does suffer some remorse. But eventually, like many social climbers, he achieves his heights by trampling on others.
What remains enduringly intriguing about Room At The Top is its portrayal of British society’s obsession with social class. Joe perceives his best chance of social elevation is to marry money. And, in 2007, I re-read this novel in a week when a United Kingdom report declared that current day social class differences were widening, whilst opportunities for social mobility are actually decreasing. So John Braine’s novel is also a social document. The book is very much of its own time. It reminds us, for instance, that in the 1950s everyone smoked – and smoked a lot. Men drank pints in the pub – some of which did not even admit women. Homosexuality was not only not tolerated, it was illegal, though remained visible. Some of the recorded individual aspiration now seems nothing less than quaint. Alice Aisgarth, for instance, declares that she would like to sleep with Joe. “Truly sleep,” she qualifies, “in a big bed with a feather mattress and brass rails and a porcelain chamber pot underneath it.” In the 1950s, most north of England houses did not have bathrooms and the potties were usually enamel.
But it is in the area of social class that A Room At The Top is bitingly and enduringly apt. Joe Lampton believes he lacks the capacity to succeed, lacks the necessary background, the poise, the breeding. He sees himself as essentially vulgar and possesses no talents which might compensate for this drawback. His rival for Susan Brown’s affections, however, is one John Wales. He is studying for a science degree at Cambridge, and thus acquiring not only the knowledge which will ensure that he will become the managing director of the family firm, but will also endow the polish of manner, the habit of command, the calm superiority of bearing, the attributes of a gentleman.
Fifty years on, we might change an odd word, and the family firm might now be multi-national, but the spirit of contemporary Britain’s class system is arguably the same. And so despite the aspiration for and perceived attainment of social change in post-war Britain, Room At The Top, juxtaposed with recent evidence, reminds us that very little, if anything, has changed – except for the cigarettes and the chamber pots, of course. Oh, and we might now also prefer lager.
April 20, 2009
First read in 1991 for school: It made me terribly angry, because I absolutely loathed the first-person-narrator. He's a misogynistic, manipulating and socially upward asshole and I was furious that we had to read this stuff. I was guilty of confusing the narrator with the author and transferred all my anger onto John (without a) Braine.
Upon re-reading I'm still not sure that the writer himself sees things differently than his protagonist. Sure, Britain's post-war society with its class boundaries and the trauma of the narrator's war experience made him behave like he does and he ends up a broken man. There is some writerly distribution of karma there, but the portrayal of the central female characters is what still makes me angry. Our narrator has got the biggest madonna-whore complex imaginable: The whore, who actually is a modern, sexually liberated woman, ends up killing herself in a car accident. The narrator rapes the madonna, the 19-year-old daughter of a factory owner and way above his status, gets her pregnant and thus climbs up the social ladder because this helps him to get her father's approval to marry her. Of course, he only ever really loved the whore, but it's too late now.
Isn't that lovely?
Maybe that's how life was in the late 1940s and early 1950s in Britain and elsewhere. Maybe the author just refrained from judging his characters. Still, I dimly remember that we didn't discuss the novel from a feminist point of view or looked at the portrayal of women in it. It was all about class and how the narrator is an angry young man.
There is much I missed in the first reading back when I was 17, but my gut feeling about the novel is basically the same. I've still got a problem with novels with asshole protagonists. I need someone I can identify with. I think back then I was especially outraged at the portrayal of Susan, the naive virgin. Today, I'm also frustrated about 34-year-old Alice who married the wrong guy and who sees herself as old and is perceived as old by her 24-year-old lover.
How do you cope with novels in which the narrator or the protagonists are utterly unlikeable? Sometimes the anger you feel is what the author intends, sometimes this anger gives you a new insight into the world.
(Post a new comment)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 3, 2016
I think a lot of people still think like this today, even if they don't end up bloody and drunk in the street at the end. The hierarchy of grades of partner seems awfully familiar, and the sense of distance from your own happiness is, sadly, not simply a product of a 50s mindset.
January 27, 2013
1 of the great gems of modern literature - if you have a heart, you will be in tears. Unfortunately, an all too true account of how love is in the real world, rather than how we wish it were.
September 10, 2025
Room At The Top by John Braine
The Romanian Version: Drumul Spre Inalta Societate
This is a good, modern novel, which was adapted for the big screen. The movie went on to win two Academy Awards for Simone Signoret in the leading role and for adapted screenplay.
Joe Lampton is a complex character, with positive traits and aspects that can make him loathsome to some readers.
I empathized with him and feel that his effort to ascend in society is not as ruthless as it may first seem. I may have misread or misunderstood some messages from what is anyway an adapted version, but to me it did not feel like Joe is trying to make it to the top, no matter what.
Like on every morning, today I have listened to the play called “Drumul Spre Inalta Societate”. This has become a ritual and I am getting the hang of it. One in three productions is worth it, and it helps me discover, in only one hour, some author I would not otherwise know. I did see the movie with Simone Signoret, but had had no idea who John Braine is, before this morning.
I found that while running with my dogs, a play can be more accessible than Joyce or Faulkner and I will develop this habit, even if for every good play, there are another two misfires.
Joe Lampton enters a love triangle with Alice Aisgaill- a married, witty woman and Susan Brown- a younger, rich and attractive person.
In a few ways, I have been in his position- having to decide or cheat on one…or both women. Sometimes you cannot help it…it is not for lack of a wish to end a difficult situation- you just don’t know what to do, or you do not want to hurt either party and end up torturing all.
Joe Lampton is attracted by both Alice and Susan, albeit in different ways. At least this is my perspective. He likes the wisdom, maturity and perhaps protection offered by Alice, but at the same time is enticed by the innocence, purity and youth of Susan Brown (which sounds like the infamous Sandra Brown- a name that used to be on all the shelves of all the mobile bookshops in town).
Mr. Brown is played in the adapted play that I listened to by George Constantin, a name that tends to come up often in my notes, because he is a role model, magician and much more than an actor for me.
I did not have a guru, or people to show me around and present the image of the perfect man. But here it is, as close to perfect as one can be:
Booming voice, strong personality, humor, extraordinary energy, herculean appearance. For a skeptic and atheist turned agnostic and still in search of the truth, George Constantin comes up with proves that magic exists.
I have seen a few movies on the theme of religion and miracle workers, priests: two come to mind- one with Robert Duvall in the title role, called the Apostle and the other is Elmer Gantry, with Burt Lancaster playing the visionary Man of God.
And the third will have Steve Martin in the role of one who starts as a charlatan but ends up really bringing rain to a town suffering from a severe draught. If it was him.
George Constantin is the man who brings rain, a smile on your face, makes your skin crawl, your head spin and heart pump at maximum rate. All at the same time or separate…depending on his wish.
He has a Room At The Top.
Supernatural powers? Yes, he has them, absolutely.
State of grace, nirvana and joie de vivre where all known by him and presented on stage or through the ether, by means of the radio.
And with his small role in this production he helped bring the adapted play to a whole new, higher level.
If I loved the play it is in large part thanks to George Constantin.
The Romanian Version: Drumul Spre Inalta Societate
This is a good, modern novel, which was adapted for the big screen. The movie went on to win two Academy Awards for Simone Signoret in the leading role and for adapted screenplay.
Joe Lampton is a complex character, with positive traits and aspects that can make him loathsome to some readers.
I empathized with him and feel that his effort to ascend in society is not as ruthless as it may first seem. I may have misread or misunderstood some messages from what is anyway an adapted version, but to me it did not feel like Joe is trying to make it to the top, no matter what.
Like on every morning, today I have listened to the play called “Drumul Spre Inalta Societate”. This has become a ritual and I am getting the hang of it. One in three productions is worth it, and it helps me discover, in only one hour, some author I would not otherwise know. I did see the movie with Simone Signoret, but had had no idea who John Braine is, before this morning.
I found that while running with my dogs, a play can be more accessible than Joyce or Faulkner and I will develop this habit, even if for every good play, there are another two misfires.
Joe Lampton enters a love triangle with Alice Aisgaill- a married, witty woman and Susan Brown- a younger, rich and attractive person.
In a few ways, I have been in his position- having to decide or cheat on one…or both women. Sometimes you cannot help it…it is not for lack of a wish to end a difficult situation- you just don’t know what to do, or you do not want to hurt either party and end up torturing all.
Joe Lampton is attracted by both Alice and Susan, albeit in different ways. At least this is my perspective. He likes the wisdom, maturity and perhaps protection offered by Alice, but at the same time is enticed by the innocence, purity and youth of Susan Brown (which sounds like the infamous Sandra Brown- a name that used to be on all the shelves of all the mobile bookshops in town).
Mr. Brown is played in the adapted play that I listened to by George Constantin, a name that tends to come up often in my notes, because he is a role model, magician and much more than an actor for me.
I did not have a guru, or people to show me around and present the image of the perfect man. But here it is, as close to perfect as one can be:
Booming voice, strong personality, humor, extraordinary energy, herculean appearance. For a skeptic and atheist turned agnostic and still in search of the truth, George Constantin comes up with proves that magic exists.
I have seen a few movies on the theme of religion and miracle workers, priests: two come to mind- one with Robert Duvall in the title role, called the Apostle and the other is Elmer Gantry, with Burt Lancaster playing the visionary Man of God.
And the third will have Steve Martin in the role of one who starts as a charlatan but ends up really bringing rain to a town suffering from a severe draught. If it was him.
George Constantin is the man who brings rain, a smile on your face, makes your skin crawl, your head spin and heart pump at maximum rate. All at the same time or separate…depending on his wish.
He has a Room At The Top.
Supernatural powers? Yes, he has them, absolutely.
State of grace, nirvana and joie de vivre where all known by him and presented on stage or through the ether, by means of the radio.
And with his small role in this production he helped bring the adapted play to a whole new, higher level.
If I loved the play it is in large part thanks to George Constantin.
May 8, 2020
"If you want to discover which grade people think you belong to, go to any cocktail bar when it's crowded and make a note of how quickly you're served." Wow, there's much to admire about this novel. Joe Lampton, the first-person narrator, is a complex character who's torn between ambition and love. The descriptions of the towns of Dufton and Warley are so vivid that you can see and smell the streets. The excoriating study of the class system is so incisive that it hurts, and the ending kicks you in the guts... This is top-notch English noir from the 1950s.
December 9, 2019
Del placer de las batas de seda a la muerte de la amante transcurre el ascenso del cínico Joe Lamptom.
February 9, 2022
3.5
Anglia postbelică, stratificare socială acută și un protagonist parvenit, Joe Lampton, plus două personaje feminine schematice care se plimbă prin viața lui: Alice, mai în vârstă,întreținută de soțul său, și Susan, copila bogată pentru care se sacrifică dragostea față de prima. M-a ținut greu în text Braine, care n-are pic de strălucire, aducându-mi cumva aminte de Theodore Dreiser și tragedia lui americană, cu care n-am înaintat prea mult. Mi-au plăcut elementele aparținând sferei sociale, dar altfel nu mi-a păsat câtuși de puțin de soarta personajelor. Probabil nici nu trebuia să-mi pese prea tare, miza cărții fiind în altă parte. Două lucruri sunt sigure: nu mă interesează să aflu cât de nefericit va fi Joe în mariajul său, deci nu voi citi continuarea, dar tare vreau să văd ecranizarea, care am impresia că-mi va plăcea mai mult.
Anglia postbelică, stratificare socială acută și un protagonist parvenit, Joe Lampton, plus două personaje feminine schematice care se plimbă prin viața lui: Alice, mai în vârstă,întreținută de soțul său, și Susan, copila bogată pentru care se sacrifică dragostea față de prima. M-a ținut greu în text Braine, care n-are pic de strălucire, aducându-mi cumva aminte de Theodore Dreiser și tragedia lui americană, cu care n-am înaintat prea mult. Mi-au plăcut elementele aparținând sferei sociale, dar altfel nu mi-a păsat câtuși de puțin de soarta personajelor. Probabil nici nu trebuia să-mi pese prea tare, miza cărții fiind în altă parte. Două lucruri sunt sigure: nu mă interesează să aflu cât de nefericit va fi Joe în mariajul său, deci nu voi citi continuarea, dar tare vreau să văd ecranizarea, care am impresia că-mi va plăcea mai mult.
May 11, 2016
Joe Lampton ("I’m better looking than everyone else") narcissistic womaniser with a chip on his shoulder about being working class relocates from crappy Dufton (up north somewhere) to Warley (who knows where) in the hope of rising t’top but ends up trying to sleep his way to the top.
Joe meets his first batch of victims at the local theatre group. But he has a rival for his affection in Jack Wales, a moneyed toff, betrothed to Susan, the nineteen year old naive little chaste rich bitch whom Joe falls madly in lust with and through whom he plans to achieve his aim of rising t’top – since her father is the major wealthy industrialist of Warley. Joe also falls madly in lust with Alice, a more (ahem) mature, married, woman. This is the crux of Joe’s problem. All the way through I kept thinking, make your bloody mind up and stop toying with these women. Does Joe want the trophy relationship or the real one?
Joe is an orphan (parents wiped out by bomb – the book is set post-war 1950s) but you shouldn't feel sorry for our main character. Joe wants to use (I mean sleep with) every woman he sees, and is seriously sexist (he along with an old friend grade women on a scale of 1 to 10) and wouldn’t think twice about deflowering a teen virgin. When Susan refuses to “give out” Joe all but rapes her. Things then begin to unravel when Susan’s father offers Joe an ultimatum forcing him to chose between Susan and Alice, with tragic consequences.
But Joe, as an anti-hero, is a brilliantly intense character and the character insight is so powerful and the writing so powerful that the book had me gripped from start to finish. The ending was genuinely thrilling.
Joe meets his first batch of victims at the local theatre group. But he has a rival for his affection in Jack Wales, a moneyed toff, betrothed to Susan, the nineteen year old naive little chaste rich bitch whom Joe falls madly in lust with and through whom he plans to achieve his aim of rising t’top – since her father is the major wealthy industrialist of Warley. Joe also falls madly in lust with Alice, a more (ahem) mature, married, woman. This is the crux of Joe’s problem. All the way through I kept thinking, make your bloody mind up and stop toying with these women. Does Joe want the trophy relationship or the real one?
Joe is an orphan (parents wiped out by bomb – the book is set post-war 1950s) but you shouldn't feel sorry for our main character. Joe wants to use (I mean sleep with) every woman he sees, and is seriously sexist (he along with an old friend grade women on a scale of 1 to 10) and wouldn’t think twice about deflowering a teen virgin. When Susan refuses to “give out” Joe all but rapes her. Things then begin to unravel when Susan’s father offers Joe an ultimatum forcing him to chose between Susan and Alice, with tragic consequences.
But Joe, as an anti-hero, is a brilliantly intense character and the character insight is so powerful and the writing so powerful that the book had me gripped from start to finish. The ending was genuinely thrilling.
September 1, 2016
There may not be a lot in plot, but Room at the Top has a whole lot in character, and that character is Joe Lampton. He's a character that we aren't meant to like. He's an anti-hero and he knows it. He's a social climber. He rates people based on levels and on monetary value. He wants to be in love, but it isn't enough that he has to like the woman of his desires, she has to be rich, or be in some kind of high class standing, for him to be remotely interested. And he wants the finer things in life, who doesn't? He's also a jealous type, envious of any guy who is richer, which means better, than him. But for all that Joe himself is worth, we know and can understand where he comes from, based on his humble beginnings and provincial life that he so diligently wants to leave behind. And he'll be shady, sneaky, judgemental, and weasel his way to the top in any way he can. Joe is such a hoot, so shady, so silly, and so ridiculous, that he's as loveable as he's very much annoying and despicable. All the other characters are relatable, because they feel the same as how we feel about Joe. Some love him, some love him a lot, and some can't stand him, just like anyone who reads this book. You'll either love him, or hate him. But you can't say that Joe Lampton is boring. As is the book itself. It's a hilarious novel, and is certainly one of the most memorable that I've ever read.
November 5, 2023
A lot of indolence for a book supposedly about ambition. Joe Lampton doesn’t “rise swify” into the unfamiliar ranks of wealth as the synopsis suggests, but is rather an innocuous observer the entire time like a cockroach perched within the cracks of a wall. His entire personality is suffused with jealousy and sexual desire, resembling a hormonal boy who is bitter he’s not cool enough to have the pretty girl to actually possess any form of ambition. If he did, there might have been a bit more of a plot to enjoy, but all we are left with is the woeful story of a miserable sod who is not nearly clever or witty enough to be able to escape his social stratum as he so desperately hopes to do. The final ‘plot twist’ was predictable and lame, making for a pretty laughable ending.
June 30, 2018
Published in 1957, Room at the Top is the story of young northern man with an enormous chip on his shoulder, as he tries to advance himself at work and socially in the most ruthless way that he can. The setting is immediately post-war and the chip on his shoulder comes from his perception of the ways in which class distinction work in Britain. This makes for a terrific story, together with added details such as the unavoidable impact of post-war rationing on all - a detail omitted from many of the dramatic presentations of the story over the years because of their contemporary setting. Brilliant, and has not dated at all.
October 15, 2017
Joe Lampton has to be one of the great characters of post war fiction: smart, passionate and massively conflicted. Braine writes Lampton's experiences almost like a memoir, with ocassional references to the fact that he's got what he wanted, or at least what he thought he wanted - always in the background there's the sense of something missed or lost entirely but it's not quite regret. It's a sad book full of people trapped by the cages of class and reputation, with brief moments of escape, which only makes it more devastating when the trap closes again.
August 15, 2013
Brilliantly evokes post-war Britain and the suffocating rules that bound everyone to their place in society. One of the few books that actually made me cry. It deserves its status as a modern classic.
May 31, 2013
A classic tale of greed and ambition from the 1950's which still resonates today. Funny and moving by turns. A beautifully written and truthful novel by a wonderfully gifted writer.
January 13, 2020
Personajul principal îmi provoca dezgust prin acțiunile sale, nu mă simțeam capabilă să rezonez cu el și să-l înțeleg.
November 24, 2022
says "firm, little breasts" at least ten times which physically repulsed me every time. and everything with Susan and her baby voice made me recoil. grim.
May 1, 2020
A great read about the challenges for the lower working class to move upwards. Set in in the middle years of the 20th century. it provides a real insight into the lives of women, the stultifying boredom and the restrictions that we must never forget.
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