Kirjahaku

Shortly before his death last year, Stanley Middleton completed this, his last novel, which concludes a unique depiction of middle-class life in 'Middle England', quietly and cumulatively over many volumes and decades. Once again we are in Beechnall, the constant setting of Stanley Middleton's novels, and his sense of place and his feeling for his characters remains as strong as ever. At the heart of A Cautious Approach is a tentative love story, which begins when two lonely men meet, out walking on Christmas Day: Andy invites George home, and there he meets the captivating Mirabel, Andy's former fiancée. George has been a teacher, but ill health has deprived him of his career and confidence, and he has retrained as a postman. This chance encounter, and others that follow, have the potential to shift George's life, and soon he is drawn into a set of uncertain relationships in which past experience, present stoicism and future expectation all play a part. As ever, but here for the last time, Stanley Middleton's bold experimentation with flashbacks, and the embedding of one scene or dialogue within another, gives added density to his depiction of ordinary, defiantly unfashionable human lives.

THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING NOVEL2019 marked the centenary of Stanley Middleton's birth.

A novel from the Booker-Prize winning author Stanley Middleton. Rejacked and reissued in Windmill.Mary and David Blackwell are content in their marriage but when Mary, a talented opera singer, is offered the chance to sing in America, everything changes. David, a music teacher and amateur cellist, is left behind in England and, when he suddenly stops hearing from her, he must decide how to carry on and what to do.'It is a very, very long time since any book made me physically cry. But Stanley Middleton's Valley of Decision did just that, twice... The story is simple... Anyone, well almost anyone, could write that story... But only Mr Middleton could turn it into something approaching a small masterpiece.' Martyn Goff, Daily Telegraph'Increasingly, Middleton's command of the ordinary has become extraordinary... In this new novel the rigours and solaces of making music are cleverly (but uninsistently) counter-pointed with the human relationships that accompany them.' Anthony Thwaite, Observer

From the Booker-Prize-winning author of Holiday. Rejacketed and reissued by Windmill to mark the 40th anniversary of Middleton's Booker Prize win.David and Alison are a successful young couple planning their wedding, but they are surrounded by family and friends whose marriages have ended in failure. As each member of this close community struggles to make or re-make a life, Stanley Middleton tests the reality of present and past marriage, its possibilities and dangers, its hopes and fears.'His reputation, built book by book, as an astute observer of middle-England bourgeois life and as a writer whose reach extends far beyond his immediate milieu, is probably now invulnerable.' Nicholas Wroe.' Times Literary Supplement'Every page is taut with inner strength and truth.' Mail on Sunday

From the Booker-Prize-winning author of Holiday. Rejacketed and reissued by Windmill to mark the 40th anniversary of Middleton's Booker Prize win.One winter evening Alistair Murray opens his door to Eleanor Franks, a woman he has not seen for decades. A man apparently content with his life, even his retirement and bereavement have come as part of the natural order of things. But just when he thinks he must get used to the slow, lonely decline into old age, Eleanor arrives to make him call into question everything he has taken for granted.'Middleton wrote books you remember decades on... He wrote a calm, whispering prose, full of unspoken suggestion between ordinary acts of daily living.' Jenny Diski'He shows us the way we age and die now, with real and graceful disstinction.' Sunday Times

From Booker-Prize winning novelist Stanley Middleton. Thomas Harris is on the cusp of success as a classical composer with a growing reputation.When his father, a coal miner, dies Thomas decides to write a requiem for him which is also a thinly veiled attack on the powerful elite. In spite of opposition he finally succeeds in getting his work performed but how will the critics react?

A family faces fundamental changes, together and apart. 'This humane book digs patiently beneath the surface of ordinary lives to the rock of universal truths.' Sunday Times'Stanley Middleton, once dubbed 'The Chekhov of suburbia', is to the Midlands suburb what Anne Tyler is to the Midwest picket fence.

Shortly before his death last year, Stanley Middleton completed this, his last novel, which concludes a unique depiction of middle-class life in 'Middle England', quietly and cumulatively over many volumes and decades. Once again we are in Beechnall, the constant setting of Stanley Middleton's novels, and his sense of place and his feeling for his characters remains as strong as ever. At the heart of A Cautious Approach is a tentative love story, which begins when two lonely men meet, out walking on Christmas Day: Andy invites George home, and there he meets the captivating Mirabel, Andy's former fiancée. George has been a teacher, but ill health has deprived him of his career and confidence, and he has retrained as a postman. This chance encounter, and others that follow, have the potential to shift George's life, and soon he is drawn into a set of uncertain relationships in which past experience, present stoicism and future expectation all play a part. As ever, but here for the last time, Stanley Middleton's bold experimentation with flashbacks, and the embedding of one scene or dialogue within another, gives added density to his depiction of ordinary, defiantly unfashionable human lives.