These Seven - now available

Latest ebook from Five Leaves, The Open Door by Alan Sillitoe

The Open Door follows Saturday Night and Sunday Morning as the final volume in the Seaton series. 

Returning on a troopship from Malaya in 1949, Brian Seaton (Arthur's brother) comes back to a Nottingham world of rationing, the black market, a wife he no longer loves and a child who does not recognise him. He is full of life and lust, but he has tuberculosis, forcing a long stay in a military hospital where he falls for first one nurse, then a second, while carrying on a relationship with another TB sufferer back in Nottingham. In the background, this partially autobiographical novel reveals that Seaton is starting to write, meeting others like him as he realises there is a wider world than the back streets of his Midlands home.
The book is available as a £12.99, published by Five Leaves/Bromley House Editions or in our Kindle edition at £5.99 on http://tinyurl.com/sillitoe-opendoor. Available on other platforms soon if not already.
Dunno what Alan would have thought of ebooks, though I can imagine.

Neil Fulwood on Alan Sillitoe's Seaton family

“You left England one person and came back another … " Meet Brian Seaton – Arthur’s older brother. Older and wiser? Probably. More sensitive? Comparatively. But a Seaton through and through. The fortunes, or otherwise, of the Seaton brothers are charted across four novels which punctuate the six decades of Alan Sillitoe’s literary career.
Before Saturday Night and Sunday Morning had been even been published in 1958, Alan had written a massive chunk of what would become his third novel, Key to the Door. Eventually published in 1961, Key to the Door details Brian Seaton’s childhood, his poverty stricken family background, his ill-advised marriage at a young age, and his service in Malaya as a wireless operator.
In 1989, Alan continued the saga with The Open Door, now reprinted by Five Leaves. A quarter of a century gap in writing, but this volume picks up almost immediately after Key to the Door. Brian’s about to get demobbed and he’s having mixed feelings about a return to civvy street. He’s pretty sure his wife’s found herself a new fella, and his experiences of travel have set the horizons of his world-view a tad wider than Nottingham. But a call back to the MO’s office sets Brian off along a different and unexpected path. An x-ray suggests a shadow on his lung.
And so Brian finds himself in a sanatorium, where the diagnosis is confirmed: TB. During his lengthy recuperation, aided by an affair with one of the nursing staff, Brian’s burgeoning intellectualism solidifies into an overwhelming desire to become a writer. Even the reader least acquainted with the facts of Alan’s life will know that he served in Malaya, as a radio operator, and received a disability pension from the RAF after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. He lived abroad for about a decade, eking this money out frugally, and dedicated himself to writing. The Open Door takes Brian to the cusp of a similar lifestyle.
There’s an academic work to be written on the autobiographical nature of The Open Door, and it would be fascinating to parse out the actual from the invented. But it’s a mistake to redact any reading of the novel in terms of the equation Brian Seaton = Alan Sillitoe. Brian is as rounded and immediate a character as Arthur, and while there is something of Alan in both of them, Brian and Arthur remain very different.
Alan concluded the Seaton saga with Birthday in 2001, although A Man of his Time, published in 2004, can be seen as a prequel of sorts. Birthday reunites Arthur and Brian in their autumn years, Arthur still belligerent despite the family tragedy he’s dealing with and Brian’s literary ambitions diluted by his success as a writer of sitcoms rather than the world-changing novelist the Brian of The Open Door wants to be.
Birthday is a wry, nostalgic, mature work but it suffered from being marketed as “the sequel to Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.” Just as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is the definitive Arthur Seaton novel, The Open Door is where the story of Brian Seaton finds its fullest artistic expression.
The novel never loses sight of Brian’s working class background, nor is there anything arty-farty in the depiction of Brian’s journey towards the completion of his first novel. The novelist within a novel can often be a tedious device, but Brian’s experiences are grounded firmly in the reality of his experience overseas, his illness, and his difficulty in shaking off his past and the various mistakes that clutter it. The Open Door also contents some finely-honed perceptions on the nature and craft of writing.

“He only knew who he was when with other people … Confidence and enthusiasm led him to believe that he succeeded more times than not.”
If we carry over the autobiographical elements of The Open Door to its comments on the art of writing, then this passage is both a truthful reflection of writing as an onerous craft, and an exercise in self-deprecation. Alan Sillitoe succeeded more times than not; succeeded in understanding the psyche of his characters; succeeded in capturing the flavours and idioms that define a time and a place; and succeeded, again and again, in creating literary works that were honest and clear-sighted. The Open Door rightfully stands among the best of them.

New from Five Leaves, The Open Door by Alan Sillitoe

Five Leaves' Bromley House Editions book this year is The Open Door by Alan Sillitoe. The Open Door follows Saturday Night and Sunday Morning as the final volume in the Seaton series.
Returning on a troopship from Malaya in 1949, Brian Seaton (Arthur's brother) comes back to a Nottingham world of rationing, the black market, a wife he no longer loves and a child who does not recognise him. He is full of life and lust, but he has tuberculosis, forcing a long stay in a military hospital where he falls for first one nurse, then a second, while carrying on a relationship with another TB sufferer back in Nottingham.
In the background, this partially autobiographical novel reveals that Seaton is starting to write, meeting others like him as he realises there is a wider world than the back streets of his Midlands home.
Copies available from http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/the-open-door/.
Alan Sillitoe is no longer with us, but Nottingham is determined to celebrate his life and work as never before. A few months after he died, in 2010, Five Leaves organised a day event about Alan attended by around 200 people. Since then the films of his books have appeared regularly, plays, a musical and two weeks ago a second day was held organised by the local Alan Sillitoe Committee, a bit less reverential than the first, as it should be given the passage of time.
The big one will, however, be the forthcoming exhibition at Lakeside Gallery, which opens this weekend and runs until February. Early details are on  http://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/Exhibitions.html. The Five Leaves connections here include some of Peter Mortimer's photos (from Made in Nottingham) in the exhibition and on Saturday 26th January I'll be curating (everyone's a curator these days, have you noticed?) an afternoon session on Nottingham working class life and leasure. I'll post more on this soon, but I think it safe to safe to say that the Lakeside cafe had better get in some extra scones. This exhibition will be just so busy.
Anyone reading this before 6.30 on Monday 19 November will be welcome to attend the book launch of The Open Door at Bromley House Library, Angel Row, Nottingham, which will be attended by the poet Ruth Fainlight and her and Alan's son, David Sillitoe. Let me know on info@fiveleaves.co.uk if you are coming.

The Open Door book launch

Every day of the week: a celebration of the life and work of Alan Sillitoe

Around 150 people attended the British Library celebration of Alan Sillitoe last night. There was an impressive line up of speakers including Margaret Drabble, Alan Jenkins (from the TLS), Miranda Seymour, DJ Taylor, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Chasseaud (who shared a love of WW1 trench maps with Alan), Richard Bradford and Tansy Davies (who had written a requiem for Remembance Sunday which was influenced by Alan). With a fairly short event none of the speakers could go into too much detail, but Margaret Drabble's contribution emphasised how much Alan wrote about nature, in a quite natural way as a backdrop to his writing. DJT said that "[Sillitoe] managed never to separate himself from those things which are worth writing about" while Elaine Feinstein reminded us about Alan's work in support of Soviet Jewry and his address to a Soviet Writers' Union conference, in the presence of Brezhnev, about human rights abuses in the Soviet Union. But Alan was not a "political writer" - "I tell stories" was the phrase he used.

The formal setting in the BL Auditorium precluded the kind of rumbustiousness seen at the Nottingham event held a few months ago, but it was well worth attending, particularly to catch up with Michael and Ann Sillitoe, Alan's brother and sister-in-law.

"Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not"

More than 200 people attended the day long celebration of the life and work of Alan Sillitoe last Saturday in Nottingham. Five Leaves initiated and led on the project, but we were joined by many literature groups in the City and County in putting together a full day's programme in the Council House. The highlights for me were seeing Frank Abbott carefully analyse the body language in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, by repeating scenes, either silently or in slo mo, which made me think much more about the films than before, and Derrick Buttress - who also worked in the Raleigh factory and is of an age with Sillitoe - reading his own poems of working class life in Nottingham. Others told me their favourite parts were John Harvey briefly outlining his development as a writer drawing inspiration from Z Cars, DH Lawrence and Sillitoe, in using plot simply as a basis for showcasing character, and Simon Rycroft and Stephen Daniels describing how Sillitoe mapped the city in his novels. Alan Sillitoe had a lifelong fascination with maps and a number from his collection were on display, as well as his writing desk, the radio he used to pick up Morse signals, his typewriter with a half finished page of manuscript in it and other memorabilia. David Sillitoe, Alan's son, played a major role in helping set up the day, which was also attended by Ruth Fainlight, Alan's wife, and Michael, his brother, as well as other members of the family. It was a great, if bittersweet day. Thanks to all who attended, organised and took part and Nottingham City Council for their support. Keep in touch via http://www.sillitoe.com/.
See also John Harvey's blog post: http://mellotone70up.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/celebrating-alan-sillitoe/

“Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not.”

Together with a raft of other Nottingham groups, Five Leaves is organising a day in celebration of Alan Sillitoe. Guest speakers include John Harvey, Gwen Grant, David Sillitoe, DJ Taylor, John Lucas, Nicola Monaghan and more. We have sessions on film, on poetry, on other Nottingham working class writers and the chance to sit at Alan's old desk and bash out the first line of your entry to the Arthur Seaton short story comp on his old typewriter. Watch out also for the Castle Rock ale being brewed for the occasion. All this for a fiver. Check out http://www.sillitoe.com/ for the full programme for Saturday October 2nd.
Photo courtesy of Nottingham Post.

Home straight

Only three more days of Lowdham Book Festival to go. You can find the remaining programme on http://www.lowdhambookfestival.co.uk/. Today we went head to head with the footie with Daisy Hay talking about the "Young Romantics", Byron et al. She was wearing a rather nice dress with a daisy design. I wanted to ask if she always wears daisies. OK, our audience of 75 was a shade less than the tens of millions watching the football match, but still, not bad for an afternoon event. Maybe we need to make little Lowdham Book Festival flags we can put on our cars and bicycles. We also had our celebration of Alan Sillitoe. The biggie for this will be in Nottingham on October 2nd, but Alan was a great friend of the Festival and we wanted to mark that. We had a full house, and people were particularly pleased that David Sillitoe read some of Alan's work. Tomorrow we go Italian, Friday some Five Leaves irregulars, Berlie Doherty, John Harvey and Jon McGregor talk about their fave books. And then "the last Saturday" - 26 free events, a big book fair, cafe. I never get to see any of the speakers. My role is to stand in the one place and say "The WI is down there" or "No, I don't have any blutack" and "Right, I'll get more toilet roll". The cutting edge of literature.

Alan Sillitoe

Though I'd known Alan Sillitoe was pretty ill it was nevertheless a shock when his death was announced (on 25 April). He had been in touch recently, passing on material he thought would be of interest, and Ruth Fainlight - his wife - had been encouraging me to call by when next in London. Unfortunately I did not appreciate how urgent that call should be.
I would not want to exaggerate how close Alan was to Five Leaves. He contributed to our collection City of Crime, a collection of crime short stories by Nottinghamshire writers, had a couple of poems in our anthology of Nottingham poets and we called our anthology of recent Nottinghamshire writers Sunday Night and Monday Morning as an obvious homage to his rather better known Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
Alan was, however, a great supporter of our Lowdham Book Festival - indeed any local event he could support. He appeared at the very first Lowdham Festival, launched later books there, introduced his films, spoke at our winter weekend on biography - anything he could do to help. He also appeared at the pre-flight Nottinghamshire Readers and Writers Day and Southwell Poetry Festival. If he was free he would do it, and that included times when his health was not so great. Alan was reasonably careful with money but always refused a fee or expenses if it promoted literature in Nottingham. He wanted to support what others did locally, and if he could lend his name or his presence he would.
We didn't always see eye to eye over Israel. Alan was a firm supporter of Zionism, but our occasional arguments were not an issue and he happily reviewed one of our books in European Judaism.
I was pleased to initiate Nottingham City Council giving Alan the Freedom of the City, in his 80th year. John Harvey was the speaker at the big event, an event packed with local writers who owed Alan a great debt.
Alan and Ruth recently became honorary joint presidents of the local Bromley House Library. I am sure BH, Five Leaves, Lowdham Book Festival and others will want to mark Alan's passing at a suitable time. Meantime of course, we offer our condolences to Ruth, and to the others in Alan's family.