My review of Room at the Top, by John Braine

Room at the Top

by John Braine

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This good old (1957) nostalgic winter's night read had me gripped from start to finish. John Braine's gritty post-war British characters are astonishingly true, their strengths believable, their defects authentic, their dialogue the real McCoy.

After studying accountancy as a Prisoner of War, ex-serviceman Joe Lampton leaves his northern English hometown of Dufton, where he grew up a poor orphan after his parents were killed in an air raid. 

Chasing a new life, Joe arrives in nearby Warley to commence his promising new job at the Municipal Treasury. Ambitious to break the archetypal working-class mould, Joe runs with the fast-changing times and sets his sights high, driven by visions of white-collar advancement.

He rents a room from the middle-class Thompson's, a couple in Warley's well-to-do quarter 'The Top' (T'top, in native dialectic terms). Joe Lampton's 'room at the top' is a metaphor for his drive to leave behind the blue-collar 'zombies' of his old life and native town.

The kindly Thompsons, deprived of a son who died at war, take Joe under their wing and treat him like family. They introduce him to their amateur dramatic society where, at weekly evening rehearsals, he befriends childlike Susan Brown, the sole daughter of an influential Warley businessman. Though betrothed to flash Jack Wales, heir to a local family fortune, Susan also quietly succumbs to Joe's pushy wooing. She remains naïve of his motive being partly frivolous opportunism, in his ruthless quest for social elevation, and partly blokey one upmanship against the self-important Jack Wales.

At these same weekly rehearsals, Joe also becomes acquainted with the older, married Alice Aisgill, who usually gets the company's leading lady roles. Though she initially plays the ice queen, Alice and Joe soon find mutual stimulation in intelligent conversation, away from the others, after rehearsals, in the nearby pub. They begin a covert sexual relationship, enacted mostly in the borrowed flat of one of Alice's actress girlfriends. One secret weekend, at a country cottage, smooth talking Joe convinces Alice this is more than physical. She is won over.

Though Joe does love Alice more passionately, he has also, meanwhile, successfully seduced the wide-eyed and willing young Susan Brown, who falls pregnant. 

As rumour erupts of Joe's adulterous affair with Alice, his reputation is compromised, threatening his prospects in Warley. His only option of keeping Alice would be elopement with her, away from her husband and Warley, leaving behind Susan and his career opportunities. 

Meanwhile with scandal looming, Susan's father, concerned for his family reputation, summonses Joe to a private business meeting. He presses Joe do the decent thing by marrying the pregnant Susan, adding, for incentive, a job offer worth a thousand a pounds year. The one stipulation is that Joe sever all ties with Alice Aisgill.

Forced to choose between love and money, Joe must sacrifice one relationship to retain the other. The outcome for the devastated woman he doesn't choose is tragic. Guilt ridden and remorseful, Joe turns to drink in a rage of self-loathing.

Room at the Top's hero intermittently morphs into anti-hero throughout, via the twists and turns of his wrestling conscience and ego. Empathising with him, we also recognise his shortcomings too. His older lover, Alice Aisgill, is entrancing, enigmatic and breathtakingly believable. She was immortalised on the big screen by the wonderful Simon Signoret, whose smouldering portrayal earned her an Academy Ward (1959), then again on the small screen by the fabulous Maxine Peake (2012), that miniseries winning a BAFTA. 

In the same period bundle as Stan Barstow's A Kind of Loving and Nell Dunn's Up the Junction (both similarly cinematised), this was a genre that gained swift popularity then achieved a sort of cult status as it just as rapidly dated. The post-war era, one of rapidly altering morals and class boundaries, is superbly captured in these then controversial novels. This is one of the best.

No great classic, in my opinion, but a broody, meaty read with a granite edge that leaves an indelible impression.

Quite unforgettable.