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Alfie #2
Alfie darling: A novel
"I feel sex is a blessing to mankind.""I know which most women would prefer - a good name or a nice bit of the other.""You can nearly always tell a woman's character but how they get into bed."Alfie's back, with another juicy chunk of his love-life for the millions of readers who lapped up the first instalment in Alfie . In Alfie Darling he's in and out of more beds than most of us have had hot dinners - and sorting out a strange bird called Abigail who's like nothing he's ever come across before. For one thing, she's a virgin..."The humour is rich and racy...one of the nicest books I have read for a long time." Sunday Mirror
347 pages, Hardcover
First published June 15, 1970
About the author
Bill Naughton
42 books12 followersWilliam John Francis Naughton (1910-1992) was a popular ‘working class’ author and playwright who was born in Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, Ireland in June 1910 and died in early January 1992 in Ballasalla, Isle of Man. He was four years old when his family moved to Bolton, Lancashire, where, after leaving school around 1924, he worked as a weaver, coal-bagger and lorry-driver, enjoying a variety of experience and knowledge before starting to write with a rare honesty and perception about ‘ordinary’ people. Although ‘Alfie’ is the play with which he will always be associated, mostly because of the film starring Michael Caine, he was a prolific writer of quality work which included such notable plays as ‘My Flesh My Blood’, ‘All In Good Time’; plus novels, short stories and children’s books. Two other plays were made into films –‘Spring and Port Wine’, with James Mason as Rafe Crompton, and ‘The Family Way’, which starred John Mills. His work also included ‘One Small Boy’, ‘A Roof Over Your Head’, and short story collections such as ‘Late Night on Watling Street’ ‘The Bees Have Stopped Working’, and ‘The Goalkeeper's Revenge’. Among his most popular autobiographical works, well worth seeking out, are ‘On The Pig’s Back’ and ‘Saintly Billy’.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 20, 2015
An unexpectedly brilliant character portrait and unreliable narrator is hidden inside this trademark seventies-sleaze cover, an out-of-print Panther paperback. If the author had been a slightly bigger name - Kingsley Amis, say, several of whose novels are advertised in the back - it surely would have stayed in print and deservedly so.
One arguable drawback, though is that the storyline's trajectory is similar to the original Alfie - but here he is better written; the first novel could even have been a draft that was substantially reworked into this. The charm just leaps off the page so the reader continually understands why people like him even after you've seeing what an arsehole he can be; and he's thoughtlessly selfish, rather than actually cruel as he could be considered in book one. He's a properly complex unreliable narrator who seems startlingly real because he isn't unreliable about everything - he's more self aware at some times than others; he can be blind to important aspects of life, yet conversely, occasionally quite wise and perceptive about some things. Whilst we learn about the other characters through Alfie's eyes, Naughton has constructed the book so that other people don't seem fundamentally distorted by him, and we always get a sense of who they are independently, and can make up our own minds about them.
It's also very funny. A lot of the humour comes from laughing at Alfie when he describes himself in ways that so obviously aren't the case. (And unlike many unreliable narrators, who are on some level vulnerable or pathetic, there's no need to feel sorry for him and not laugh at the afflicted. He always bounces back, not much changed.)
This type of jack-the-lad first person narrator certainly does annoy a subsection of Goodreads, whether it's because of their personal experiences, favoured strand of gender politics, or both - but I for one find myself laughing at such attitudes when I find them in a book that's 45 years old, or heard from irrelevant old dinosaurs. (It's terribly unfashionable to laugh at sexist attitudes these days - whatever happened to the idea that it it was one of the best ways to disempower / humiliate them?)
A few hours after I finished the book, a GR friend posted a review containing a sentence that could be perfectly applied here: "many people like cats but they don't necessarily consider them equals." John Knox and Alfie Elkins would make very strange bedfellows, [if I could draw well I'd do you a little Morecambe and Wise style cartoon] but regardless of the 400-odd years and matter of reality separating them, both are popularly agreed to have lacked respect for women. Actually, it's not just that Alfie doesn't respect women as equals, he doesn't particularly respect anyone. He prefers the company of women to men, and there might be one or two blokes he respects more than most of his birds, but just about anyone who's not Alfie is often mistaken, in his view. And everyone is ultimately accepted with a certain amicable amusement, just as pets are. (But far more so than a good pet owner, he sees them all as being there for his amusement.)
It's possible that greater equality has created more absurdity out of Alfie's narrative than would have been in evidence in 1970. The blurb suggests that some people, at least, read it at pretty much face value. One can imagine that a teenage boy from a certain sort of background would easily have done - but how different it might have sounded, yet it would be no less good as a piece of literature, if he'd re-read it, say, 20 years later, and in the New Man era to boot. (I've re-read adult novels I loved as a teenager and can't believe how different they seem when more than twice as old.) I don't think reading this is necessarily just about laughing at straight men; whilst the popular sport on GR is criticising them, I think anyone of whatever gender or sexuality who's had a phase of being, or thinking they were, a bit of a player - and can look at back on that with a few years' detachment and honesty, would recognise the sort of tricks and accumulated assumptions and likes and dislikes our rarely-humble narrator has: there's some stuff to be embarrassed about, but it's also just how things look from a certain angle.
A lot of the time this was a 5-star book. A few ropey scenes let it down. It was still 4.5 until fairly near the end. I usually find trope-spotting and consequent marking down a lazy form of criticism; I thought I'd seen a commonly criticised trope here and was debating with myself what to make of it. Then there was a twist that made its intention more conscious, ambiguous and clever: I'm not sure if it was that sequence of events, or something else, but I found myself a tad less enthusiastic about the book than I had previously, hence only the plain 4 stars.
One arguable drawback, though is that the storyline's trajectory is similar to the original Alfie - but here he is better written; the first novel could even have been a draft that was substantially reworked into this. The charm just leaps off the page so the reader continually understands why people like him even after you've seeing what an arsehole he can be; and he's thoughtlessly selfish, rather than actually cruel as he could be considered in book one. He's a properly complex unreliable narrator who seems startlingly real because he isn't unreliable about everything - he's more self aware at some times than others; he can be blind to important aspects of life, yet conversely, occasionally quite wise and perceptive about some things. Whilst we learn about the other characters through Alfie's eyes, Naughton has constructed the book so that other people don't seem fundamentally distorted by him, and we always get a sense of who they are independently, and can make up our own minds about them.
It's also very funny. A lot of the humour comes from laughing at Alfie when he describes himself in ways that so obviously aren't the case. (And unlike many unreliable narrators, who are on some level vulnerable or pathetic, there's no need to feel sorry for him and not laugh at the afflicted. He always bounces back, not much changed.)
This type of jack-the-lad first person narrator certainly does annoy a subsection of Goodreads, whether it's because of their personal experiences, favoured strand of gender politics, or both - but I for one find myself laughing at such attitudes when I find them in a book that's 45 years old, or heard from irrelevant old dinosaurs. (It's terribly unfashionable to laugh at sexist attitudes these days - whatever happened to the idea that it it was one of the best ways to disempower / humiliate them?)
A few hours after I finished the book, a GR friend posted a review containing a sentence that could be perfectly applied here: "many people like cats but they don't necessarily consider them equals." John Knox and Alfie Elkins would make very strange bedfellows, [if I could draw well I'd do you a little Morecambe and Wise style cartoon] but regardless of the 400-odd years and matter of reality separating them, both are popularly agreed to have lacked respect for women. Actually, it's not just that Alfie doesn't respect women as equals, he doesn't particularly respect anyone. He prefers the company of women to men, and there might be one or two blokes he respects more than most of his birds, but just about anyone who's not Alfie is often mistaken, in his view. And everyone is ultimately accepted with a certain amicable amusement, just as pets are. (But far more so than a good pet owner, he sees them all as being there for his amusement.)
It's possible that greater equality has created more absurdity out of Alfie's narrative than would have been in evidence in 1970. The blurb suggests that some people, at least, read it at pretty much face value. One can imagine that a teenage boy from a certain sort of background would easily have done - but how different it might have sounded, yet it would be no less good as a piece of literature, if he'd re-read it, say, 20 years later, and in the New Man era to boot. (I've re-read adult novels I loved as a teenager and can't believe how different they seem when more than twice as old.) I don't think reading this is necessarily just about laughing at straight men; whilst the popular sport on GR is criticising them, I think anyone of whatever gender or sexuality who's had a phase of being, or thinking they were, a bit of a player - and can look at back on that with a few years' detachment and honesty, would recognise the sort of tricks and accumulated assumptions and likes and dislikes our rarely-humble narrator has: there's some stuff to be embarrassed about, but it's also just how things look from a certain angle.
A lot of the time this was a 5-star book. A few ropey scenes let it down. It was still 4.5 until fairly near the end. I usually find trope-spotting and consequent marking down a lazy form of criticism; I thought I'd seen a commonly criticised trope here and was debating with myself what to make of it. Then there was a twist that made its intention more conscious, ambiguous and clever: I'm not sure if it was that sequence of events, or something else, but I found myself a tad less enthusiastic about the book than I had previously, hence only the plain 4 stars.
June 24, 2020
If you like the book/film Alfie you'll enjoy this sequel. A real treat in this ridiculously PC world. Well worth hunting down.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews