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A Temporary Life
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 Storey Colin 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 move north. As Yvonne wastes away in the hospital, sinking deeper and deeper into a terrifying and incomprehensible madness, Colin tries to make sense of his strange surroundings. He may live here now, but he will never call it home. To pass the time, he takes a job teaching art at a second-rate college that is headed by a nutrition-crazed dean. Colin makes friends, meets women, and plays tennis, but nothing can distract him from the fact that his wife is slowly dying and he is helpless to stop it.
Home
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 longer exist. Storey's timeless play is a beautiful, compassionate, tragic and darkly funny study of the human mind and a once-great nation coming to terms with its new place in the world.
A Stinging Delight
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 his life. And yet, a prolific and celebrated writer, he recalls heady spells in New York, close relationships in the theatre with Joycelyn Herbert, Ralph Richardson and Lindsay Anderson, early success with This Sporting Life, and winning the Booker Prize for his novel Saville.
Life Class
Depicts a crucial day in the life of an art school teacher named Allott, as he aims to lead his class through the processes of discovery that will turn their sketches into artworks, but which instead lead only to troubling scenes and crossed boundaries.
A Serious Man
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 Storey Richard 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 squalid London apartment to his ancestral mansion, where he courted his 1st wife—Harriet’s mother, Bea—whom he met at a Christmas dance. Home again, with ghosts all around, Fenchurch journeys back in time while struggling...
The Changing Room
"David Storey is a writer who genuinely extends the territory of drama" (Guardian) The Changing Room: "It's about exactly what it is: Storey offers us, with an unforced tenderness, the shifting moods of everyday experience...the scene is busy, purposeful and exhilerating. You'd never imagine realism could be this theatrical...The Changing Room takes you into its world in a way few plays achieve." (Independent on Sunday)
Pasmore
A teacher oppressed by the futility of everyday life embarks on a dark affair in this extraordinary novel that won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize In his dreams, Colin Pasmore runs an endless race. No matter how hard he pumps his legs, he loses—and not just to other runners, but to every “dullard and idler” in England. Every morning, he wakes up screaming in terror. His life should be joyful; he has a lovely wife, healthy children, and a comfortable job. But as he approaches thirty, Pasmore feels the walls closing in. He must find a way out before ordinary existence suffocates him. In a desperate attempt to escape his routine, Pasmore rents a small room in London, intending to use it for an affair. But adultery does nothing to lessen his burden. As misery threatens to consume his soul, Pasmore will ask himself if any life—even a happy one—is worth living.
Saville
Colin Saville grows up in a mining village in South Yorkshire, against the background of war, of an industrialised countryside, of town and coalmine and village.
The Farm
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Storey Plays: 3
The latest collection of David Storey's plays; including the newly revised and revived The Changing Room. Introduced by the author This third volume of David Storey's plays contains The Changing Room (Royal Court 1971): "If The Changing Room is Storey's most powerful drama, it is because he has found in sport his purest metaphor for the war of existence" (Time Magazine); Cromwell (Royal Court 1973): "An exploration of the vices and virtues of the English Puritan instinct using the historical associations of the Cromwellian period. On top of that it is also an impressive piece of poetic drama employing a spare, flinty, concrete language that seems to be hewn out of rock...a rich and complex play" (Guardian); Life Class: "a portrait of a man, dangerous, controlled, and wounded, who brings down his whole career in one enormous gesture signifying that all we hold of good from the past is now incapable of renewal and irrelevant to our present needs...Life Class is not merely a very good play. It is a blazing masterpiece...It is a tremendous experience and its glare lights up the sky." (Sunday Times) "David Storey is a writer who genuinely extends the territory of drama" (Guardian)
