Stay With Me Till Morning

by John Braine

1st VG/G.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literature

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 24, 1970

About the author

John 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.

Reviews

[Joe Stamber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over the course of 40 years during which life changed immeasurably, John Braine provided the reader with an incredible social commentary of Northern Britain. His collection of flawed characters never fail to engage and they carry the story along to such an extent that I sometimes feel that once Braine thought them up he just threw them on the pages and let them tell the story themselves.

Stay With Me Till Morning was published in 1970 and is a typically Braine-esque study of human behaviour at the time. Braine's characters can't enter a room without describing it in minute detail or meet someone without doing the same, but he gets away with it because it's never Braine eloborating it's his characters. He was a genius and it's sad that his later works are often overshadowed by his magnum opus, Room At The Top.

[Adrian Buck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I've just read a sex'n'shopping novel. Well written, good characterisation, but I feel a little soiled.

[Herman D'Hollander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally I got round to reading this novel, which was published in 1970 and whose paperback cover features a beautiful girl covered by nothing more than a revealing bathrobe. Which character in the book she personifies is anybody’s guess. The plot revolves around the married couple Clive Lendrick and his wife Robin. He is the wealthy, easy-going co-owner of the family’s wool mill in Yorkshire, together with his brother Donald, who really runs the business. The story follows these characters from their young years, through their marriage, getting children, a huge house, a big Mercedes etc., till they reach middle age, when their children have grown up, and when the ‘troubles’ start and their cosy life is uprooted. Robin falls in love again with Stephen Belgard, a BBC producer she had loved and necked with just before marrying Clive; Clive, an effortlessly attractive man for women, starts an affair with Vicky, the pathetic, alcoholic and suicidal wife of Bruce Kelvedon, who by the way wants to divorce her and has already started an affair with an American woman, until Clive almost dies because desperate Vicky has opened the gas tap of the stove of their getaway flat (right after she said ‘Stay with me till morning’, p. 184),; whereupon Clive, getting a heart attack in the meantime, starts a relationship with bookshop keeper Ruth who knows and accepts that Clive will want to go back to the easy comfort of his big Tower House, which he does, insisting to his wife however that he wants to keep seeing Ruth, which his wife Robin accepts in a mutual agreement, as she wants to go on seeing Stephen, who does not leave his wife Joan who is pregnant with child. Right. So the crux of the novel is extra marital relationships of middle aged couples and, apart from the sex, the strain it puts on them, psychologically, emotionally and practically. It was an interesting and pleasant reading experience, thanks to Braine’s fluid prose and realistic dialogues. Two caveats however. First: Braine has the unnerving habit of introducing each new character and each interior (kitchen, flat, bedroom etc.) with a terribly long description of how they look, what they wear and what do (characters), and which furniture there is, in which material, the carpet, the chairs, the cutlery and the crockery etc. etc. (interiors). Well written, but boring frankly, and unnecessary. Second: in the latter part there are passages which one would expect in a cheap novel or a ‘soap’, with lines like ‘I love you!’ ‘I love you too’, and with an awful lot of drinking (whisky, brandy, vodka…) and smoking (Benson and Hedges, Peter Stuyvesant, even a pipe (Bruce)) going on. Yet all these details have the quality of reviving the past era of the sixties, with its interiors (‘formica’, ‘linoleum’, ‘pebbledash’, p. 192), its outrageous fashion (e.g. an ‘identity bracelet’!, p. 90) with clashing colors, its pub life, and the interest these middle class characters have in books, theatre, cinema and culture in general. Clive becomes even an avid reader of books: highly unlikely for a CEO of today! Those were the days, in which you could impress with your cultural knowledge or your status as a ‘culture man’, like a BBC producer. In all: an entertaining read. Not least because this is a real work of fiction, written by a good writer (an ‘Angry Young Man’) who knows how to invent a story and structure a plot, without himself being the main source of ‘inspiration’, unlike today’s avalanche of ‘novels’ by (mostly female) authors of minority groups who use the genre of the novel as a wailing wall to complain about the discrimination they suffer, and bore their readers (if any) to death with their self-centred grievances. A last remark: John Braine makes no bones about describing the sexual organs and act without prudish reticence. A ‘refreshing’ openness, all the more so in a novel of 1970.

Quotes:

- the omniscient narrator about Stephen and Robin: “And they were of the same generation, they had the same values, the same tastes, the same memories and, being so close in age, the same fears and the same intimations of infirmity. It was extraordinarily comfortable to be with her; they walked, as it were, at the same pace, he wasn’t out of breath trying to keep up with her.” (p. 123)

- Clive getting dressed: “(Clive) changed into his brown slacks, brown suede shoes, bright orange socks and shirt, a matching yellow tie and handkerchief, and a turquoise and scarlet and lemon checked hacking jacket.” (p. 207)– English taste in clothing!

[David Mundy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in a clear direct syle, this novel works as well as a sort of middle class kitchen sink domestic drama. The subject suits the writer's detailed but straightforward approach. The erotic element is presented in a rather unappealing way, and the finish is rather anti-climactic, nevertheless a neat little novel of postwar northern English life.

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Braine was a very good writer. Unfortunately, once it comes to sex, he is too explicit. None of his characters seem to think twice before jumping into bed with someone else. This rather spoils his writing for me.