| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Billy Liar (Penguin Decades) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling.
Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar was published in 1959, and captures brilliantly the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small town. It tells the story of Billy Fisher, a Yorkshire teenager unable to stop lying - especially to his three girlfriends. Trapped by his boring job and working-class parents, Billy finds that his only happiness lies in grand plans for his future and fantastical day-dreams of the fictional country Ambrosia.
About the Author
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
At first, his carefree, devil-may-care insouciance is amusing and the reader is drawn into Billy's bizarre self-vision as lively raconteur and comic wit. However, as the story progresses, he becomes a more troublesome figure. He's engaged to two different girls, and apparently in love with a third. More problematically, he has no emotional connection to realityóevery episode in his life takes on the aspect of a sketch or scene in which he struggles to determine what role to play, what accent to adopt, or what pose to strike. It becomes heartbreaking to witness Billy's belief that he's smarter than everyone around him and destined for great things, when everyone else can see right through his poses and tired routines. (It'd be interesting to know what a psychiatrist's diagnosis of Billy would be.) As the lies pile up, Billy finds himself painted into a corner from which only drastic action will free him. His only avenue of escape is to actually pursue his longstanding claim of a job offer in London writing scripts for a standup comic. The reader is torn between wanting Billy to stay and face up to his misdeeds, and wanting him to get on that train to the Big Smoke and realize his dreams. Of course, the outcome is inevitable.
Waterhouse grew up in Leeds, and like Billy, worked as a clerk in an undertakers. The prose is liberally sprinkled with Yorkshire dialect, and does a brilliant job of capturing the small town atmosphere, from the grubby disco, to the local cafe, and claustrophobic house. The book was turned into a play the year after publication and into an excellent film several years later, a TV miniseries in the early 1970s, and an insipid American TV series called Billy. A sequel called Billy Liar on The Moon appeared in 1977, and more recently there are allegedly plans for an American feature film remake, although I'm not sure who thought that would be a good idea..
Billy is a teenager stuck in a fictional northern English town, he hates his life and when he isn't dreaming of going to London he spends his time escaping into a fantasy world in his head called Ambrosia where he is Prime Minister.
At first Billy's antics are amusing but as the book goes on it is apparent that although Billy believes he is smarter than everyone else, the fact is that everyone sees right through him, he is not always a nice person either. The whole tale climaxes at the end when he is standing on a platform deciding whether to leave for the ever elusive London or stay and confront his problems. That's not a spoiler, the spoiler would be telling you his final decision.
This book is often funny and its the comic elements that will likely stay with me, its an original book and Billy is a great, complicated character. Worth reading.
On a final note, considering it was published in the 1950s its amazing to see how little teenagers have changed,
'You decided to get up, then,' my Mother said, slipping easily into he second series of conversations of the day. My stock replies were 'Yes', 'No, I'm still in bed', and a snarled 'What does it look like?' according to my mood. Today I chose 'Yes' and sat down to my boiled egg, stone cold as threatened.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
