until you get there" must have been coined for Joe. The saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side. Joe is a wonderful creation, an angst ridden Yorkshireman who is never happy with his lot.
I persevered, and slowly but surely the selfish, whining child inside Joe surfaced as his mid life crisis arrived prematurely. Early on, I began to get almost bored and thoughts of a 2 star rating emerged as Joe's rather mundane life unfolded. Initially, we are led to believe that everything has changed the 50s have become the 60s, Joe is married with kids and has a decent job with his father-in-law. In Life at the Top we catch up with eternal pessimist Joe Lampton 10 years after his introduction in Braine's debut, Room at the Top. I’d recommend this highly, and even more so when read in conjunction with the first novel. The plot could have easily degenerated into the clichéd kitchen sink realism and soap opera, but I certainly think that Braine’s portrayal of one man’s mid-life crisis – at 35!!! – is a convincing and affecting one. This is a shame, because it’s definitely a worthwhile addition to the canon and a worthy sequel to a fine debut from Braine. Life at the Top was seemingly lost in the rush of ‘angry young men’ novels that emerged in the UK in the late-1950s and seems now long forgotten. Set ten years from the events of that novel, Life at the Top chronicles the life and trials of Joe Lampton, a once ambitious man of humble origins who has discovered that ‘life at the top’ (well, in the upper middle classes) is not all it was cracked up to be.Ī fantastic snapshot of a certain time and place (England’s industrial north in the early-1960s), of a certain class consciousness (a rising proletariat and declining landed gentry) and a shifting gender and sexual politics. I read John Braine’s debut Room at the Top a few weeks ago and enjoyed it very much. 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. His next book, Life at the Top (1962), a sequel to Room at the Top, sold well and was filmed in 1965.īraine, 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. His second novel, The Vodi (1959), met with mixed reviews and a disappointing reception, but was Braine’s favourite of his own works. 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. John Gerard Braine was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1922.
0 kommentar(er)
