Kind of Loving, A

a novel by Stan Barstow, published in 1960. Vic Brown, the narrator-protagonist of Barstow's first novel, is the son of a solidly respectable mining family enjoying the post-war years of prosperity and full employment. Set in Cressley, a fictitious industrial town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the novel creates a convincing picture of a society adapting its strictly moral and hierarchical past to a more liberal future, and absorbing the manifestations of a burgeoning popular culture. Caught up in the middle ground between the old and the new, the naïve and self-absorbed Vic drifts into a purely physical relationship and ends up in a loveless marriage to a girl he has made pregnant. Despite the barely restrained savagery and anguish of its later episodes, the novel ends positively with Vic finally accepting responsibility for his own actions and determined to make something of his unpromising future.