Birthday

Seaton #4

by Alan Sillitoe

Birthday is the long-awaited sequel to Alan Sillitoe's classic novel of the 1950s, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Four decades on from the novel which was at the forefront of the new wave of British Literature, we re-discover the Seaton brothers: older, cetainly; wiser - possibly not. Arthur and Brian Seaton, one with an ailing wife, one with an emotional knapsack of failure and success, are on their way to Jenny's 70th birthday party. Jenny and Brian had years ago experimented with sex - semi-clothed, stealthy, with the bonus of fear. Arthur, of course, had cut a winning swathe through the married and unmarried women of Nottinghamshire. Life has changed. Alan Sillitoe is undoubtedly one of the greatest English writers of our time, and, indeed, one of the most influential.

Genres: Fiction, British Literature, Contemporary

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2001

About the author

Alan Sillitoe was an English writer, one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s (although he, in common with most of the other writers to whom the label was applied, had never welcomed it).
For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sil...

Reviews

[Anthony Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel I ought to have enjoyed this more than I did. The story updates the reader on the lives of the Seaton brothers, Arthur, Brian and Derek who threaded their way through Sillitoe’s break-through novel, ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’. As someone only a few years older than Sillitoe’s characters in ‘Birthday’, I appreciated the typical reactions of people aware that time is passing and asking themselves whether they have lived a fulfilling life, and liked Sillitoe’s understanding of the nature of ageing, of reflection and of looking to get the most out of what is left, and starting by taking pleasure in the moment. It’s still about seizing the day, but having a rather clearer idea of what’s worth seizing, and how to value it.

I think the difficulty I had with the novel is that it lacks a narrative drive. The opening chapter sees Arthur and Brian talking about getting to Jenny’s 70th birthday party (Jenny is Brian’s first great love, and his love manqué), but they don’t get there until page 117. The intervening pages are, basically, backstory, filling us in on Arthur and Brian’s pasts in a non-linear, grasshoppering way. From all this we gather that Arthur is now happily married and settled with Avril, but she has cancer; that Brian has been and still is a successful scriptwriter for TV, and has had a couple of wives; and that Jenny has been looking after her recently-deceased husband George for several long years following his severe disablement in a factory accident. Derek, and his wife Eileen, don’t appear until page 117: they have been waiting at the birthday party venue for Arthur, Brian and Avril since page 1, (as I felt I had been, but, in my case with a certain uncharitable impatience).

There is plenty of good writing in the novel (although there are a lot of car journeys that perhaps would be best appreciated with a specialised grasp of the hinterlands of Nottingham). Descriptions of human interactions, of brothers comfortable in each other’s company, of wives who understand and put up with (perhaps even affectionately) their husbands’ gritty language, and reflections on previous relationships are well done; events, such as the birthday party itself, and, in particular, Brian the professional writer’s recollections of incidents in the past with Jenny and his mulling over what he’s achieved since his days as a young hothead in Nottingham, these are well done too. The pleasure of eating is very pleasurably described. I flinched sometimes at what felt to me like slightly stilted dialogue, unless I’m not familiar with Sillitoe’s Nottingham vernacular and missed the accuracy of it.

So - as the Daily Express’ blurb said, ‘A beautifully crafted and perceptive work’ ?

Perceptive, yes: I enjoyed that aspect of it all. But crafted? – certainly, if by that you mean Sillitoe’s style which is fluent, confident and without pretension; less certainly for me, however, if you consider the narrative structure, which may follow the meandering recollections of the protagonists, but which, in their meandering, I found hard to be drawn forward by.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Appropriately slower-paced and ruminant, as is only to be expected forty years on, but while reference is made to physical decline, mentally nothing has changed as far as challenging and opinion and humour and willingness to interact with life and other folk is concerned. While there is sadness there is also hope in the unchanging nature of underlying family loyalties.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb sequel to 'Saturday Night, Sunday Morning', this one moving on 40 years from the original tales of brothers Brian and Arthur, both now older but, as the blurb says, not necessarily wiser as they look back on incidents from their past and we learn about their current situations. Beautiful poetic and evocative prose - a delight to read.

[Helen Stanton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sequel to Saturday Night, Sunday Morning.......albeit written 40 years on. The same gritty style but very poignant in parts. It was nice to meet up again with Arthur Seaton, one of my teenage heroes, and discover he had become a pretty nice bloke! Alan Sillitoe seems to have gone out of fashion now......don't know why as he's a brilliant writer.

[RYD · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like Alan Sillitoe and his working-class humanity. This story is about aging and the regrets and victories of life as seen near the end of it. I think the best audience would be folks older than me – which may be why the copy I bought from Amazon arrived as a large-print edition.

[Danié · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because I was from Nottingham and have lived most of my life in Australia.
The book was uninteresting in parts and I struggled to keep reading.
Reading about the towns and some of the locations in this book, did bring back memories which were nice.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good, for completists. Ties together "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" and "Key to the Door", my two favorite books of all time. This guy STILL gets it, has always gotten it.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed it, and being a Nottingham girl I could hear the accents in his writing. Nice to learn more about Arthur and his family, albeit many years on.

[Stevec · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[The Armchair Nihilist · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Birthday” is the sequel to Alan Sillitoe’s acclaimed 1958 “angry young man” debut “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” (SNSM). It’s a rather peculiar follow-up with the main character from SNSM, Arthur Seaton, now relegated to a secondary role and the focus shifted instead on to his brother Brian who did not even feature in the original novel.

Set four decades on from the events of SNSM the characters are now well into old age and struggling with illness, generation gaps and lingering regrets over the roads not taken. It’s a standard checklist for any work about ageing and if Sillitoe doesn’t have much new to say here there are at least some affecting passages. The scenes where former lovers Brian and Jenny attempt to reconnect after decades apart should touch a chord with anyone who still sometimes finds their thoughts drifting back to “the one that got away”.

Other parts are less convincing. I could appreciate Sillitoe’s literary achievement in SNSM while still finding Arthur Seaton a thoroughly disagreeable character, but his transition here from belligerent lout to sensitive carer for an ailing spouse feels completely unconvincing. Nobody changes that much even after forty years and the Arthur of SNSM would have been out the door and shacked up with a younger bit of fluff at the first sign of any personal inconvenience, far less self-sacrifice.

Arthur’s implausible transformation aside, perhaps the greatest weakness here is the absence of any central story. What we get instead is series of scenes loosely strung together with a narrative that leapfrogs around from character to character and past to present without ever going anywhere. There are some poignant moments scattered throughout the pages but not enough to compensate for the book’s shortcomings. Overall something of a disappointment both as a sequel and as a meditation on ageing and difficult to recommend when there are so many other better books out there including a few by Sillitoe himself.

[T Palmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was worried that this sequel to the life-affirming Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, would tell of Arthur's surrender into domestic drudgery. Happily, it did not for 2 reasons. First it was the reminiscences of the 70 years old Arthur and his family , and secondly, his brother, Brian, was the main character.
We learnt that Arthur's first marriage had been a failure but happily he had found a magnificent woman, Avril, whom he treasured as she justly deserved and with whom he was happily domesticated. Arthur was clearly a good man, not as self-obsessed as in his youth but still with plenty of fight and spirit but now with quite a lot of wisdom too.
His brother Brian, a successful London screen-writer was less impressive. The poor man was still as sex obsessed as a teenager and as a man in his seventies should have had the sense to keep it to himself. No one else wants to know. Heavens, I've become a prude

[Gerald · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having loved 'Saturday night, Sunday morning', written by Alan Stillitoe in 1958 I was delighted to find there was a sequel and promptly sought it out.

Sadly though this one didn't work for me. Gone was the kitchen sink drama novelty of a book (nearly) set in the early years of my life, and in its place a four tale of aging people who once had so much promise. Not that they did have that much promise really, born when and where they were, perhaps their lives were always going to pan out this.

Added to the fact that I was on holiday in sun drenched Thailand when I read this book, perhaps two stars is a little harsh but either way, it didn't inspire me. Perhaps I should stick to some light holiday reading for the time being!

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Up Yer Bum!

A brilliantly observant, fresh, realistic portrayal of the follies of youthfulness and their juxtaposition with political and social changes as we get older. Life grates, but it also sings, and it does so with a lot of learning, a good deal of rolling with it, as well as some pretty horrible, ugly, and boring experiences thrown in the mix. Sillitoe manages to bring everything back to the characters we’re catching up with after a 40yr gap, without making it vague and nostalgic, and shows the progression of his language and thinking inline with his characters’, whilst keeping a goodly amount of cheek, humour, and warmth of spirit

[Jenny Hemming · Rating 5 out of 5]

Takes up Arthur's story 50 years later. The writing is as fresh as ever. The most striking thing for me was the scale of change over the period.