Snag Flight Into Camden Constructed By David Storey Accessible In Publication

bad, but preferred This Sporting Life, Terminally dull story about the 'love' affair and I say that cautiously between two mind numbingly boring people who run off to live in London because they're having an 'affair' I say that tentatively, there's no passion there.
This was no doubt shocking in the's an era which now seems like light years away but has much less impact in 'modern' times.
The reader has no concern for any of the characters, as they're presented like cardboard cutouts,
I think the author overstretched himself by writing from a woman's perspective to be honest because it's just not believable.

The narrative is stultifying and oppressive, like watching a bad's film, along the lines of :
'Shall I leave'
'If you like' gets the tea tray cups rattle
'Do you want me to' turns to stare into bleak northern sunset
'If you wish' pours the tea
'Ok'
'Goodbye'
'Goodbye' fades to sound of tramcars and factory whistles
That's about it, really.
The reader just ends up as uninspired as the book,
“Flight into Camden” was first published in, It is set initially in a grimy mining area on the outskirts of Manchester, a setting Story knew well because he was the son of a miner and first in his family to go to university.
The main narrator is Margaret, daughter of a working miner, She and her two brothers were allowed to complete their schooling and the two brothers Michael and Alec have continued on to university, and have careers when the book starts as a university teacher and a chemist.
Margaret has only gone as far as secretarial college and works as a secretary, I say “allowed because for working class parents of thes allowing children to continue their education after the legal leaving age of fifteen meant a delay in their contributing to the familys finances by working at whatever job they could get.

Michael takes Margaret with him to a literary discussion group and there she meets Gordon Howarth, known always as Howarth, a veteran in his thirties who teaches Industrial Design at the art college.
What Michael, Margaret and Howarth all share is the idea that their education should enable them to break away from their working class background and become selfactualizing independent adults.
Michael still lives at home to save money, but spends his time in Manchester with his university friends.
Margaret tags along when shes invited to try and connect to his life, Howarth socializes at the university as much as he can though hes made to feel inferior for only teaching at the art college.

In the first part of the book Storey draws a detailed picture of a young people in the industrial north who cant work out how

to negotiate the differences between their parents lot in life and the potential that education has opened up to them.
Michael derides his brother Alecs focus on his wife and child telling Margaret, “A man should be a man, not a father.
” Margaret rejects the idea of motherhood influenced by Michaels attitude, telling her mother “Being a mother, to me, it all seems hopeless and useless.
” Her pursuit of Howarth is not deterred by finding out he is a husband and father, the idea that he can leave that all behind and start afresh does not seem unreasonable to her.

The title is more evocative than is perhaps obvious, The attraction of London to young people living in the industrial north at the time of the book, and later when I was growing up in the same area, was that it seemed to offer boundless opportunity and an anonymity which would enable you to leave your class origins behind.
Margaret and Howarth flee their homes and families and they end up in Camden because there they can find somewhere affordable to live.
Camden is part of Greater London, but its still a tube or tram ride to the center of London where all the new and endless excitement and opportunity they dreamt of supposedly is to be found.
Camden is now fairly gentrified and trendy, but my guess is that Storey chose it because back then it was entirely nondescript.
It may not be the grimy North, but its not really London either, Arriving in Camden did not provide you with change, you still had to make it happen,
The core of the book, and what makes it so interesting, is how the two of them struggle to figure out what really matters to them, how to build a relationship of equals and how to justify it all to the families torn apart and bruised by their rejection of them and their values.
Some blurbs describe the book as a romance, but I dont find it romantic, It is however a fascinating take on the times, and the changes taking place in society, and it has relevance for young people starting out in the working world today.

The ending felt unsatisfactory to me, but maybe I am more optimistic than Storey was then, Even so I think many of the problems and issues Margaret and Howarth struggle to work through resonate today though, fortunately, most young people have more examples that can show them the way forward.

I loved this novel and the manner in which it was written, Though published in, it has a timeless and universal quality about it because of the spare, minimalist writing, containing just enough details and letting the reader fully participate imaginatively with the story.
I was fully immersed. Magnificent novel! I hated everyone in this book One of those books that I would have loved to quit, but instead I suffered through till the end.


It is hard to pinpoint what makes this such a poor read, It has definitely aged badly, While the themes the writer tries to convey here are quite universal, their setting and the characters just never really connect.
They would be believable in a medieval fantasy setting, or a novel set in theth century, but somehow not in this one.
Maybe we are still too close to these times

The language is simply bad, I never felt really comfortable with the style it is written in, The characters also fall flat, and their dialogue is abysmal at times,

Nothing good in this one, Maybe it works as an example how to not write a book, Storey won theSomerset Maughan Prize for novelists under, and despite its dour grim northern face, it's got more energy than the other two I'd previously read Saville and Pasmore.
I enjoyed reading it in its originals orange Penguin paperback, imagining being on one of the Londonbound steam trains Storey describes.


The main surprise was that Storey writes from the female protagonist's viewpoint, Margaret is doubly trapped by her gender and class in her unlocated mining community somewhere Yorkshire or County Durham.
She seeks excitement and escape in the married person of Howarth, whose selfcentredness is made slightly more bearable than Pasmore's as we see him thirdperson, and tinted just slightly more rosy through Margaret's eyes.
Again Brits of a certain age will find it hard to escape the wailing credits of Coronation Street.
The snipy overthewall comments and domestic dramas with a tutting mother and besooted and brooding father come straight off Tony Warren's soap, which was born almost contemporaneously late.


If you are going to read one of the prizewinning Storey novels, I would make it this one rather than Pasmore or Saville.
I am interested in This Sporting Life too, however, and would like to read it alongside Gordon Williams's 'They Used to Play on Grass'.
Both authors majored in gritty workingclass novels, but have been praised for football novels that suggest their enthusiasm and potentially optimism lay elsewhere.
This book was extremely boring, I'm just glad I'm through, And I honestly don't know what else I could say about it, It was just boring. Its chilly starting at the funeral of the grandfather is not forgettable,