Three thought-provoking novels from the Man Booker Prize–winning British novelist of This Sporting Life and "an absorbing writer" ( The New Yorker).The son of a coal miner who went on to play professionally in the rugby league, British author David Storey drew heavily on his own background for his debut novel, This Sporting Life, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award and was made into a film with Richard Harris. "The leading novelist...

Three powerful novels from the Man Booker Prize–winning British novelist of This Sporting Life and "an absorbing writer" ( The New Yorker).The son of a coal miner who went on to play professionally in the rugby league, British author David Storey drew heavily on his own background for his debut novel, This Sporting Life, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award and was made into a film with Richard Harris. "The leading novelist of his g...

An art teacher searches for meaning in a strange town as his wife spirals into madness in this stunning novel from Man Booker Prize–winning author David StoreyColin Freestone had not planned to live in northern England. The people here are so passionate and raw that he does not expect to ever understand them or feel at ease. But when his wife, Yvonne, fell sick, she would only accept psychiatric care if she could be near her mother, so Colin had no choice but to mov...

An illustrated classic from the author of Saville and Flight into CamdenWritten before David Storey's 1976 Man Booker Prize–winning novel Saville, Edward tells the tale of a kindly and aging bishop who lives his life by just and holy standards—until one day he is surprised by the appearance of an old key, sitting in a curious box atop his study desk. Illustrated by the fine hand of Donald Parker, Edward follows the bisho...

From "the leading novelist of his generation" (the Daily Telegraph)—a story about marriage, family, and 1 man's 2nd chanceAt age 47, former playwright Frank Attercliffe lives with 2 of his 5 children in a 4-bedroom apartment on Walton Lane on the outskirts of an English suburb. For the past 3 years, his wife, Sheila, has been living with Maurice, a car dealer who owns a Rolls-Royce, a Bentley, and a Jaguar—a man rumored to have killed 3 people in car acci...

A novel about family and class restrictions by the Man Booker Prize–winning author of This Sporting Life and SavilleWith 2 rooms downstairs and 3 upstairs, the house at Spinney Moor Road is a real step-up for the Morley family. Arthur Morley is a farmer who frequently comes home drunk, and who often competes with his prudish, penny-pinching wife, Sarah, for the love of their boys, Alan and Bryan. It is Bryan, the younger son, who begins to want mo...

A successful playwright, painter, and novelist confronts his mortality and the past during a major life crisis in this novel by Man Booker Prize–winning author David StoreyRichard Fenchurch has had a long and successful career as a playwright, painter, and novelist. But at age 65, he is coming apart at the seams. Fearing he will do something drastic if he remains alone, Fenchurch's married daughter, Harriet, takes charge of his life. She moves her father from his s...

A seventeen-year-old is sent to the country to live with his much-older half-brother and falls into an unexpected affair in this novel by Man Booker Prize–winning author David StoreyThe narrator of Storey's eleventh novel is an angst-ridden seventeen-year-old who shares intimate details of his life in the form of memos written to himself. Born in Beverly Hills, California, Richard "Rick" Audlin now lives with his film producer half-brother, Gerry—who is thirty-five...

The third son of a coalminer, David Storey takes us from his tough upbringing in Wakefield, to being 'sold' to Leeds Rugby League Club, to his escape to the Slade School of Art and his life in post-war London. He describes shocking scenes in the seventeen deprived East End schools in which he taught. He documents the childhood death of his eldest brother, addressing much of the memoir to him and exploring how this relates to his own sometimes paralysing depression, which haunted most of hi...

A wry and deeply affecting novel about a man's ruminations on art and death by the Man Booker Prize–winning author of This Sporting LifeMatthew Maddox is an art historian and professor emeritus at the Drayburgh School of Fine Art. Nearing 70, his 3 sons are grown and his ex-wife, Charlotte, has remarried. After a failed suicide attempt in front of a moving train, Maddox attends art therapy classes in order to find new meaning in his life.Although he...

"David Storey is a writer who genuinely extends the territory of drama" (Guardian)The Contractor: "A subtle and poetic parable about the nature and joy of skilled work, the meaning of community and the effect of its loss" (Observer); Home: "about the solitude and dislocation of madness and...the decline of Britain itself...part of the play's appeal is that Storey leaves it to us to draw our own conclusions...a play that contains within itself the still, sad music of humanity." (Gua...

One works. One looks around. One meets people. But very little communication takes place . . . That is the nature of this little island.As five apparently unrelated characters meet in a seemingly insignificant garden, the autumnal sun shines overhead and everybody waits for rain.What they discuss is superficially anything that can pass the time. What is portrayed is the very essence of England, Englishness, class, unfulfilled ambition, loves lost and homes that no ...