Birthday

The long-anticipated sequel to Alan Sillitoe’s bestselling
classic 1950s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Arthur and Brian Seaton are heading back to their hometown
Nottingham some forty-odd years after the close of
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. The brothers plan to
surprise Brian’s first love Jenny Tuxford on her
seventieth birthday. Arthur the notorious lothario still
has some of his old spark but it has been hampered by
domestic life and his wife’s recent cancer diagnosis.
Meanwhile Brian now a failed novelist but successful
television writer living in London is struggling with
dissatisfaction and emotional regrets. He and Jenny had
fooled around in their teenage years—a lot of heavy
petting through complicated clothing on her parents’
settee—but Jenny ended up marrying someone else. Now that
Jenny’s husband has passed away will sparks fly between
her and Brian again? It is clear that the Nottingham of
their youth no longer exists. The trams are now buses; the
collieries and ironmongers have been replaced by cell
phone shops and halal grocers; new high-rise apartments
have sprung up; and the idle young hang around the city
pubs whining about the dole. Where Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning portrayed the chaotic energy of youth
Birthday is an investigation of the other end of the
spectrum: the contemplation of missed chances and terminal
decline and the awareness that “death’s blackout could
descend at any minute.”