This series of short stories reminded me of Trainspotting with its hints of hope glimmering through a pervasive nihilistic attitude adopted by the young people in the text.
In Sillitoe's case, a touch of nihilism affects not only the young characters but their older counterparts. What's remarkable about this is these books were published forty years apart. It's as if the despair Sillitoe is expressing (as one of the "Angry Young Men" of mid-century British fiction) is still reflected in the former colonial realms that form the landscape of Trainspotting and other texts like it.
The nine short stories of this volume share not only location but in part character as well - although each character in each story is depicted as a different person - differen name, family situation, occupation etc. - they still all sound like the same person. The despair and degradation of institutionalized poverty and children who grow up in families on the dole is pervasive. The narrator's voice, particularly in the title piece, sounds like the disenfranchised Alex in Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (published three years after Sillitoe's volume).
"The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner"
The narrator is an inmate in a home for juvenile delinquents, telling his story at the end of his time there. During the course of his incarceration, he was given the opportunity to do long distance running, and the governor was eager for him to win the race and the cup. In his mind, he must be honest, and to be honest, he cannot win the cup for the governor. The story is a first person narration, written as a memoir/confession shortly after the events it describes.
"Uncle Ernest" Third person narration describes the life of a lonely upholsterer who is temporarily lifted out of his loneliness by befriending two sisters and buying them gifts and lunches instead of spending his cash on beer. He is warned off the friendship by policemen and returns to beer drinking.
"Mr. Raynor the School-Teacher" The teacher scuffles with his students, not caring whether they learn or not while he spends his day watching the young girls who work in the store across the street.
"The Fishing-Boat Picture" A postman is left by his wife after nine years of marriage when she runs off with another man. She comes back ten years later, visiting him every week and borrowing money. She likes the picture on the wall of a fishing boat and he gives it to her but buys it back from the pawn shop a few days later. They say nothing about it to each other. Ten years later he gives it to her again. This time she is hit by a bus on her way home and dies. He tells the story twenty-eight years later.
"Noah's Ark" The narrator is a ten year who describes how he and his cousin beg and steal money to go to the fair. They eat and ride on the Noah's ark carousel, but in an effort to evade the ticket taker, the narrator falls off the ride, injuring himself. They head home at midnight, disappointed in the way the day ended, but contented at having been to the fair.
"On Saturday Afternoon" The narrator again is a young boy who watches his neighbor attempt to commit suicide by hanging himself from a light fixture. Although the young boy tells him the fixture won't hold, he tries it anyway, falls to the floor and is arrested for attempting suicide. The narrator hears that a few days later, the neighbor succeeded by jumping out of the sixth floor window of the hospital he was taken to.
"The Match" Lennox, the narrator, is a nearsighted middle aged man who, after watching his team lose their football match, goes home to beat his wife after verbally abusing her and the children. His neighbor, a newlywed, cannot understand how two people would treat each other that way.
"The Disgrace of Jim Scarfedale" Jim is an only child, and shocks his mother by announcing he is going to marry. Everyone expects the girl to be a loser like Jim, but it turns out she is very well educated. She rapidly turns derisive and abusive when she realizes that Jim doesn't fit her idealized version of a working class man and that he has no desire to rise up and overthrow his bourgoise masters. Jim returns home to his mother who works hard to keep a good house for him.
"The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller" Frankie is a twenty year old who leads his gang of younger boys on adventures around the town, small mischief but nothing big enough to get him in trouble. The narrator admires him, but when he meets up with Frankie ten years later, after getting an education and reading books, he realizes how simple Frankie was and how their childhood is not able to be recuperated.