David Storey
The following novels constitute the shortlist for the 1976 Booker Prize:
Notable Omissions from the 1976 Shortlist
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Saville David Storey |
Dustjacket synopsis:
"Saxton, a mining village in South Yorkshire, is the setting for David Storey's new novel, his most complex and ambitious
since Radcliffe. Against a background of war, of an industrialized countryside, of town and coal mine and village,
Colin Saviille grows up shaped not merely by the spiritual and social ambitions of his starkly contrasted parents -
the mother slow, long-suffering and deep-feeling, the father mercurial, outward-going and violently charged - but by the
character, richly observed and idiosyncratic, of the mining community itself. Out of this context of home and
industralized village emerges a deeply driven and resourceful child, set against the forces which have made him.
"Saville, David Storey's sixth novel, is an epic, gripping in its evocation of Colin Saville's struggles and of the sights and sounds of his place of birth, and powerful in its depiction of his spiritual and moral growth. The winner of the Booker Award, Britain's most coveted literary prize, it amply confirms David Storey's status as one of our leading novelists."
Quotes:
"Reading this magnificent book is like drinking pure spring water from cupped hands. It has no false notes, no
heaviness of emphasis, no editorial manipulations of plot to prove a point. One becomes so totally involved in the
lives of these people that their every word and action becomes charged with meaning...Reminiscent of a nineteenth
century classic." - Jeremy Brooks, The Sunday Times
"Mesmerically readable. Saville is a revelation. It is alive with light and air and a kind of perpetual
motion." - Michael Ratclife, The Times
"Again and again I found myself paying Storey the reader's finest compliment of saying, 'This is the way it has to be,
because this is the way it really is.' If you are looking for an intellectual and artistic honesty, a patient
thoughtfulness and detailed insight into other lives, a controlled drama of ordinary and extraordinary people, this novel
will delight and move you." - C.J. Driver, The Guardian
"Saville is not one word too long. It is worth the ten years it took to write for the result of this industry is
a clarity of style and a purity of design...An epic narrative, crowded, naturalistic and riveting." - Valerie Jenkins,
The Evening Standard
"Not once during its 506 pages did the familiar man with the stop-watch intervene to challenge my total immersion in the
life of Colin Saville." - David Caute, New Statesman
"This minutely focused novel of childhood and growth is David Storey's most ambitious book so far. His previous novels seem
in retrospect to be mere ranging shots or flanking attacks: this is the assault on the stronghold...a major achievement" -
Eric Korn, The Times Literary Supplement
"No one has written of this classic dilemma [of a man severed from his roots because of his education] with such detail
and penetration as we find in Saville, nor has any previous novel so totally described a working-class family
in transition during the real revolution of the forties and fifties." - Ronald Blythe, The Listener
First Paragraph:
Towards the end of the third decade of the present century a coal haulier's cart, pulled by a large, dirt-grey horse, came into the narrow streets of the village of Saxton, a small mining community in the low hill-land of south Yorkshire. By the side of the haulier sat a dark-haired woman with phlegmatic features and dark-brown eyes. She wore a long reddish coat which covered the whole of her, except for her ankles, and a small, smooth-crowned hat which fitted her head rather like a shell and beneath which her hair showed in a single, upturned curl. In her arms, wrapped in a grey blanket, sat a child, scarcely more than a year old, with fair hair and light-blue eyes, who, as the cart pulled into a street several hundred yards from the village centre, where the houses gave way to farm fields, gazed about it in a blinded fashion, its attention suddenly distracted from the swaying of the horse in front.
From the Harper and Row hardback edition, 1976.
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An Instant in the Wind Andre Brink |
Dustjacket synopsis:
"In early 1749 the Erik Larsson expedition into the South African interior came to its final halt somewhere along the
Great Fish river. The guide had committed suicide, the Hottentot bearers had all deserted, and all but two of the oxen
had been stolen by raiding bushmen. Elizabeth Larsson did not yet know it, but her husband lay dead in a thicket some
miles away, beneath a blanket of branches. ..
"Elizabeth's fate was decided by the arrival of Adam Mantoor, an ex-carpenter and runaway slave from the Cape, who for some weeks had been secretly and compulsively tracking the wagons.
"At first their relationship was guarded, poisoned by the black and the white in them both. But, slowly and breathlessly, there emerged between them a fellowship that engulfed their most private selves.
"Such a long journey ahead for you and me. Oh God, oh God.
"An Instant in the Wind is the poetic reconstruction of a true life drama, told with passion and yearning. The terrain of South Africa is described with exceptional mastery, alongside that other, intimate human landscape of happiness.
"This no one can take away from us, not even ourselves."
First Paragraph:
Who were they?
Who were they? A few more facts may be added by tracing, with much trouble and some luck, the long list of the dead composing their genealogies.
Adam Mantoor In 1719 Willem Louwrens Rieckert, a farmer near Constantia, entered the birth of one Adam in the Slave Register of the Cape. The mother was reported to be Krissie, also known as Karis, a Hottentot woman. But as Hottentots were not generally kept as slaves in those days, additional research is required to explain that she was booked into Rieckert's service in 1714, at the age of ten or eleven, after being discovered, with a number of other children, by an expedition to the Olifants River soon after the epidemic of smallpox which had ravaged the colony the previous year. The name of her child's father was registered as Ontong, a Cape slave also in Rieckert's service, but sold soon afterwards to one Jeremia van Niekerk, farmer of Piquet Berg, for 800 rixdollars.
From the W.H. Allen hardback edition, 1976.
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Rising R.C. Hutchinson |
I haven't seen a copy of this book, and know nothing about it.
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The Doctor's Wife Brian Moore |
Quotes:
"Economy, verve and that most priceless commodity - readability" - Edna O'Brien, The Observer
"The subject - an ordinary woman seized by love for a younger man in the middle of her life - supplies just the right
material for Mr Moore's tender, probing technique. It is uncanny: no other male writer, I swear (and precious few
females), knows so much about women" - Janice Elliott, Sunday Telegraph
"The novel is near perfection. The elegance and clarity of style rides in perfect harmony with the subtlety and depth of
feeling. The dialogue is perfect - the author's ear sharp for the cadences of ecstasy, self-pity, love and anger. The
feeling for mood and background is perfect...a novel of mature assurance and brilliant insight that must make it one of
the outstanding works of fiction of the year" - Peter Tinniswood, The Times
"Nightmare images of tanks cruising down empty night streets, feverish erotic couplings with a stranger in foreign hotels;
a married woman with one son from a provincial backwater breaking out on a trip abroad; a concerned sibling observing
a rebellious young sister; the palpable absence of God in the central characters' lives and the notion that art and sex
might replace Him...a splendidly bracing experience" - New Statesman
"The erotic force of the love scenes is considerable" - The Guardian
First Paragraph:
The plane from Belfast arrived on time, but when the passengers disembarked there was a long wait for baggage. 'This plane is full seven days a week,' said a chap who stood beside Dr. Deane watching the first suitcases jiggle down the conveyor belt. 'It's the best-paying run in the whole of the British Isles,' the chap said. Dr. Deane nodded: he was not a great one for conversation with strangers. He saw his soft canvas bag come down the ramp looking a bit worn at the edges, and no wonder. It had been a wedding present from his fellow interns twenty years ago. He picked up the bag, went outside, and took the bus to Terminal II to catch the twelve o'clock flight to Paris. It was raining here in London. It had been very blustery when he left home this morning, but the weather forecast had predicted clear skies over the southeastern part of the British Isles. In the airport lounge, after being ticketed and cleared, he decided to have a small whiskey. It was early in the day, but he thought of the old Irish licensing law. A bona fide traveler is entitled to a drink outside normal hours.
From the Paladin paperback edition, 1988.
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King Fisher Lives Julian Rathbone |
I haven't seen a copy of this book, and know nothing about it.
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The Children of Dynmouth William Trevor |
Dustjacket synopsis:
"A small, pretty seaside town is harshly exposed by a young boy's curiosity. His prurient interest, oddly motivated,
leaves few people unaffected - and the consequences cannot be ignored."
Quotes:
"First rate" - Robert Nye, Guardian
"A very fine novel...the work of a master craftsman and a deep creative talent" - Peter Tinniswood, The Times
"A master of persuasive realism who commands a graphic style to match it...He has surpassed himself in simplicity of
structure, fertility of invention, ruthless characterization and diabolical humour" - Sean O'Faolain, Irish Press
First Paragraph:
Dynmouth nestled on the Dorset coast, gathered about what was once the single souce of its prosperity, a small fishing habour. In the early eighteenth century it had been renowned for its lacemaking and its turbot, and later developed prettily as a watering place. Being still small, it was now considered unspoilt, a seaside resort of limited diversions, its curving promenade and moset pier stylish with ornamental lamp-posts, painted green. At the foot of grey-brown cliffs a belt of shingle gave way to the sand on which generations of Dynmouth's children had run and played, and built castles with moats and flag-poles.
From the King Penguin paperback edition, 1982.
Notable Omissions from the Shortlist:
"The Painter of Signs", R.K. Narayan
This page and its contents are copyright © 2002 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Last modified: April 17, 2002.