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Sillitoe's sympathy for the working class is best demonstrated in the title story, narrated by a teen resident of a reform school whose voice vibrates with rebellion. The youth shows a keen awareness of his position within England's rigid class structure and has made a conscious decision to resist those whom he says have "the whip hand" over him. Sillitoe reveals the motivation for his protagonist's attitude in an understated but memorable scene in which the youth remembers finding his laborer father dead, blood spilled out of his consumptive body. The reader sees the boy's perception that his father's life has been used up by the system. In the story's surprising final turn, the youth -- who has become a champion runner for his school -- attempts in his own way to turn the tables on that system.
The book contains several other strong stories. "The Fishing-Boat Picture" is the bittersweet memoir of a failed marriage; it effectively dramatizes the sense of lost opportunity we feel when our most important human connections are broken. "Mr Raynor the School-Teacher" brings to life the stultifying atmosphere of a London public school classroom presided over by a jaded teacher whose only ambition is to keep his rebellious charges at bay so that he can drift in reverie. "The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller" has the feeling of a memoir. The narrator describes his hardscrabble youth and subsequent escape from his environment. Frankie Buller is the symbol of the ruined youth he left behind: a boy who was once a giant among his playmates who has grown older without ever progressing spiritually or creatively. The narrator would never wish to be a Frankie Buller, but his words are permeated with the guilty tone of the survivor.
Not all of the stories succeed as admirably as these. Still, at his best, Sillitoe crafts the claustrophobic environments of his stories, often in the service of social criticism. His characters may long to escape the grays and blacks of their worlds, but the stories themselves offer no such escape for the reader.
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