There Is a Happy Land

by Keith Waterhouse, Bill Hagerty (Introduction)

'[A]mong the few great writers of our time.' - Auberon Waugh, The Independent

'He gets into the mind of his eleven-year-old, sees the world from the height of three foot six . . . The book is vivid, accurate, perceptive . . . how brilliant - and how honestly - the author makes his original effect.' - The Observer

'An exceptionally talented novelist.' - The Sunday Times

'Remarkable for the deep and unwavering insight it gives into child behaviour . . . the candour of his vision and the cunning of his art are such that he captures the very essence of the eleven-minus mind.' - The Times

Inspired by its author's own childhood experiences, this moving novel is the story of a fateful few weeks in the life of an eleven-year-old boy on a public housing estate. When an eccentric man who is unusually fond of children (they nickname him 'Uncle Mad') moves onto the estate, the wheels of tragedy are set in motion, a tragedy made especially poignant because we experience it through the eyes of the young narrator, who is incapable of fully understanding the significance of the terrible events unfolding around him . . .

Although Keith Waterhouse (1929-2009) is best known for his classic comic novel Billy Liar (1959), many critics believe his first novel, There is a Happy Land (1957), is his best. This edition is the first ever published in the United States and includes a new introduction by Bill Hagerty and the original jacket art by William Belcher.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

152 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1968

About the author

Keith Spencer Waterhouse CBE, was a novelist, newspaper columnist, and the writer of many television series.

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5 stars *

[urmom]

no i totally didn’t see this in an alex turner picture, wdym? 😳

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird little read.
A story about a young boy living on the estates in the fifties. A story about confrontation and friendship. A story about tragedy and the abused.

For the author to effectively embody the mind of an 11-year-old for 200 pages is incredibly impressive. I felt like I had lived and breathed the majority of this book.
What felt like a nice story about youth quickly drifted into an unsettling and sickly territory, which I was almost grateful for as the recollections of youth for the first half of the novel we’re starting to wear thin.
Enjoyed the story, but there wasn’t enough there to properly sink my teeth into.

Standout quote:
“The air was crisp and adventurous”

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

fantastic, touching, funny and scary all at the right moments. perfectly written Yorkshire slang, the main character is nameless and after reading it i wouldn't have it any other way. i cried near the end because Marion, a friend of the main character, is supposedly murdered by a man they called Uncle Mad. You may be thinking that you don't have to read it after reading this but i assure you that i will never forget this book because it has touched my heart and very rarely does that happen. an amazing and powerful account of growing-up, fights and family, loves and losses. i believe that this story will be one you can never forget. the slang is quite difficult to follow but when you do decipher it you will be glad you did. a fantastic story. I would keep typing but then i'm afraid that you'll give-up on the book and read a...COMIC, now that is a scary thought. but the point is that this book has touched me and i hope that anyone else who reads it will feel that too. the story is beautiful and will make you cry at exactly the right moments.
please read
even my dad remembers it from when he read it in his class at school, he told me about so we bought it off the internet and i loved it, you're most likely falling asleep as you read this but I want you to know that this book is probably the most powerful book that i have ever read and i hope that more people start to read it again like they did when my dad was young. i'm going to recommend this book to all my friends-just a pre-warning-and my school library. the copy i have is a classic school's edition, it's old but the story is no worse. i bet the story is amazing however you tell it.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

What did I think? I enjoyed the kids running around yelling at each other, "falling out" or being "back on pals". It was a lively, believable writing of children from the perspective of one of them. I found some of the same hectic entertainment value as in Billy Liar. Ultimately I don't know what the point of this book was. A few thing develop and one big thing happens at the end. But it's not reflected on or even resolved really. At least since it didn't go anywhere it was short. A lot of cute name calling with British slang if you're into that.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye. The narrator is an ordinary young boy (around age 10?) and we see the story unfold through his eyes. What's uncomfortable and heartbreaking, really, is that the boy sees and describes things so innocently, but as the story progresses the reader can see what's really happening and what the outcome is going to be.
Overall, I enjoyed the story, though the old Yorkshire slang took some getting used to.

[Grant Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Waterhouse. I struggled to engage at first but. by the end, I was really impressed with his style and how he had managed to inhabit the mind of the young person in the narrative. Each of the early chapters almost reads as a nostalgic idealistic utopia seen from a young persons eyes. You are not aware that the plot is building up slowly. I will seek out more by him including the classic Billy Liar.

[Wendy Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect evocation of a mid 20th century childhood. There is a story, and there is a climatic event but it is almost irrelevant to this child's eye view of the world.

[Dileri · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was just ok.

[Andy Maddox · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can one say that has not been already said.
It's a wonderful portrayal of childhood, not the usual seen through the eyes of a middle or upper class fool.
The unnamed boy is streetwise, canny, vulnerable and empathetic to others.
His child like description of the character of Uncle Mad and his perceived scariness is quite shocking and reminds the reader to be cautious when interacting with strangers.
His family is a delight though dysfunctional with their trials, tribulations and relationships which, again are, naively described and is a source of great humour.
One feels that the book A Kestral For A Knave by Barry Hines was inspired by Waterhouse and rightly so, in my opinion.
I would recommend anyone of any age to read this and laugh and cry as I did.

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read after 40+ years of my original first edition copy (that cost me more than a day’s wages when I bought it!) If there is a better and more real depiction of working class childhood in the 1950s, I have never come across it. The mannerisms, speech, play, squabbles, loves,and most of all, the things we (I was a child of the era) were forbidden to do, but did anyway, are all packed into this wonderful short first novel by Keith Waterhouse. It’s laugh out loud funny, and it’s also very sad.
Fiction as social history doesn’t come better than this.

[Kate Fromings · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those tales that seemed to resonate with me. I have read it a few times (as it's quite short) and each time I can feel myself being dragged into their era. My feeling about the story and the characters changed as I got older, I don't want to include any spoilers, so I won't go into details - but I feel that there is a lot of misunderstanding of certain people, and on one level it makes me sad... but there is still doubt there which gives me the chills every time I get to the end.

[Christine Rapley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary book. I believed the voice of the child throughout - authentic and real. It resonated with my child self as I remember similar thoughts and behaviours. The secretive imaginative world of children. The last couple of chapters were particularly surprising. Riveting - like a thriller. So evocative of the times it was set in. I loved it.

[Lise M Dickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Looking for more Keith Waterhouse books.

[TheJuicebox Mrjbuttons Flubber · Rating 1 out of 5]

There isn't a happy land

[Lia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a little slowpaced but interesting. The end is absolutely horrifying.
7/10

[Chahula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keith Waterhouse absolutely nails the narrative voice of a young boy.

[W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptionally good. A really great exploration of childhood and childhood understanding.

[Nik Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keith Waterhouse’s excellent debut novel was published in1957 and is narrated by an unnamed boy (‘Told her my name’ (p21)) of almost eleven years of age in the year before the Second World War. As Waterhouse was born in 1929 there may be elements of autobiography in thisshort novel, perceiving the world from that childhood period: ‘Braithwaites’ (house) had been empty for ages. They had a telegraph pole in their garden. They were dirty. They had to have the bug-van when they removed’ (p16).

The boy lives with ‘my Aunty Bettie’ as both his parents are dead. His best friend is Ted – until they have a final falling-out. The interplay where they don’t speak and avoid eye-contact and befriend others is spot-on.

He befriends newcomer Marion Longbottom. ‘She knew a lot, did Marion. It was her that told me that if you swallow chewing gum, well it gets all tangled up round your heart, and if you swallow orange pips, well you get oranges growing out of your ears’ (p31).

The book title is from a song a lad sings: ‘There is a happy land, far far away/Where they have jam and bread three times a day./Just one big fam-i-lee,/Eggs and bacon they don’t see...’ (p38).

Waterhouse captures the mindset of childhood perfectly: ‘My heart always started bumping when people whispered at each other’ (p51).

Some of the older boys and girls would go off to the fields. ‘Suddenly I felt hot and sweaty and miserable and sick. All the whispers I didn’t understand, heard in the school lavatories and from the big lads, late at night at the top of our street, came back to my mind’ (p84).

He went to the fairground and won some coins. ‘I had five-pence now. I held the pennies tight until they were hot in my hand. I put my hand to my face and it smelled of copper. I was going to lick one and then I remembered Marion telling me that if you do, you get cancer’ (p100).

There is bullying and senseless fighting and annoying spitefulness. ‘... he used to get behind me and try to tread my heels heels down’ (p127).

For the narrator it is not a happy land, but it’s the best he has, despite being involved in a tragedy near the end.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book holds a very special place in my heart. I first read it when I was about 12 years old. The school was selling off a number of its old books and I managed to get a copy. It is basically the story of an unnamed boy, around 10 years old and his life growing up in a northern town in the 1950s through his naïve eyes. It affected me on a level I'd never experienced before, yet I couldn't quite explain why back then and it was one of my all time favourites as a child.

Somehow, my old battered copy of it got lost over the years and then numerous years later I saw a second hand copy for sale - the same edition I had owned all those years previously and so I quickly snapped it up. I was a little concerned at first as there are not many of my childhood favourites which have stood the test of time but this one was even more moving to read as an adult, and has cemented its place as a fixture on my bookshelf. The memories came flooding back, the way it is written with the northern dialect, colloquialisms (which if you are not from the area at that time could be difficult to understand - I'm not from that area but managed to interpret them and their meaning) which for me added an extra layer of charm and authenticity to the book. It is a coming of age story, how our main character starts to realise things not only about himself and his family but also the sometimes cruel adult world around him. It is also an historical snapshot of a more simple time and how children of that era grew up, behaved and entertained themselves but it has a darker side and also reveals a time when the evils of the adult world were just as apparent as they are today.

[Gerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as a boy. I can say exactly when I read it because I liked it so much, I stole my copy from my school - or rather, I just didn't hand it back in after reading it. It is a Longman Imprint book published in 1974 specifically for schools. I have read it many times since then.

It is a coming of age novel set in Leeds in the 1950s. My own coming of age, so to speak was probably not much more than ten years later than in the story but it felt like they were in a different world. However I was easily able to identify with the emotions and feelings of the main character, if not the world in which he lived. I was enthralled and captivated by it but looking back now, something I may not have been able to understand nor articulate back then was that by time I read it, it was describing a past that was alien to so introduced me to the feeling of nostalgia that perhaps I hadn't previously encountered, except through spoken word from parents and grandparents.

A wonderful story, beautifully told through the eyes of the main character (who is never named in the book). Moving, at times very edgy, it does not gloss over the hard times in which the book is set, nor does it glorify them. A fantastic story with great characters and although I was already an avid reader by the time I read this book, I still feel it contributed to my life long love of reading.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I forget how this book got on to my reading list - and it was hard to get a hold of. I ended up making an inter library loan owing to the astronomical second hand prices - even on Amazon. Luckily inter library loans in Wales are free and Rhondda Library had a copy.

The story is a snapshot of life in Yorkshire. Written in the 1950s, it harks back even further and one of the best things about the book is the atmosphere it evokes of the bygone age. Something of a coming of age story, there is a nasty twist but ultimately not one that it gratuitously dwells in.

Keith Waterhouse was a wonderful writer, who was at his best when he wrote about his childhood. He sadly passed away a while back, and that is our loss.

[Keith Astbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is something unsettling about this book. For the most part it's kids falling out with each other but you always feel that something bad is about to happen and there's an underlying tension beneath the often amusing, er, musings of the young narrator. A very well written book that gets better as it goes on x

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked this a lot more than Billy Liar.

Works itself into a child’s point of view as well and fluidly as the justly celebrated (if unjustly more celebrated) Paddy Clarke ha ha ha.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye-opening and thought provoking...

[Linda van Schaik · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books.