Entertainment For Lively Minds
A Raging Calm
Posted by Olthwaite on 16 October 2011 - 11:32pm.
It's About:
Weeks after Stan Barstow died, I struggled to find any of his novels - apart from A Kind Of Loving - even in towns near his Wakefield birthplace.
I eventually came across A Raging Calm, which is set in 1965 but at first feels like 1865 - women are described as overwrought or firm-bodied and men wouldn't dream of making their own tea.
The novel initially revolves around Tom Simpkins who is having an affair with a tenant, Norma Moffatt. But A Raging Calm comes alive with the introduction of Simpkins’s secretary, Andrea Warner - a far more sympathetic character - who is torn apart by her love for married teacher Philip Hart and her guilt for what she is doing.
Barstow is excellent at describing the characters’ agonising dilemmas and recording a time when familiar places and attitudes are changing. After a moribund start, the novel hits its stride as the consequences of Simpkins and Andrea’s affairs reverberate.
Length of read:
Medium
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Billy Liar, Taste of Honey, lovers of social history and Yorkshire
One thing you've learned:
It's the mid-60s but there are some familiar 21st century themes - pubs are shutting because there’s not enough custom, identikit housing estates are going up, working class people on the way up are voting Tory, and 15-year-olds are getting drunk and going to discotheques in Leeds. A stroppy girl explains to her baffled mother what a discotheque is: 'It's a kind of club where they play the latest records and you can dance.' Only soft drinks and coffee are sold (she claims).
