Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

a novel by Alan Sillitoe, published in 1958. Arthur Seaton, the bullish young hero of Sillitoe's first novel, is a worker in a Nottingham bicycle factory, whose week is spent in grinding repetition at the lathe, and who erupts into hedonistic action in his evenings and weekends. Rebelling against the hypocritical conventions and morality of society, he lives according to his own rules and values. The novel follows in his confident footsteps through the pubs and night-time streets of Nottingham, showing the sordid realities of his frantic drinking sessions and affairs with married women. Through matter-of-fact description and realistic dialogue, Sillitoe creates a sense of the narrow, retributive world of the Nottingham working class, within which Arthur's relish for explosions of violence and excesses of drunken, garish entertainment is both understandable and attractive. Sillitoe imparts a strong sense of the hero's unspent energies and his fear of entrapment. The book ends with Arthur on the verge of marriage, preparing for the Sunday morning of reckoning which must follow the Saturday night of his riotous youth