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Room at the Top Audiobook by John Braine
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Title: Room at the Top
Author: John Braine
Narrator: Kevin Whateley
Format: Abridged
Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-17-07
Publisher: CSA Word
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
Braine's first and most successful novel of working-class "angst" and the struggle of "angry young man" Joe Lampton to climb the social ladder by whatever means possible. A riveting portrait of ambition and class tension, this 20th century classic has been filmed and made into a TV series.
© and (P)1999 CSA Telltapes Ltd.
Members Reviews:
"No More Zombies"
"With an instinct like a water-diviner's where money's concerned," twenty-five-year-old Joe Lampton is ready for "a very different world." His parents dead, having been raised by an aunt in Dufton, an impoverished and dying town with a river running nearby filled with "water as sluggish as pus," and having fulfilled his military service Joe is ready to move on up in life. He wants a life with "no more zombies" as he and his best friend Charles Lufford dubs anyone they "didn't approve of" and Lampton is willing to do anything to make sure that a new and better life is his--at any price.
Room at the Top (1957; with an Introduction by Janine Utel in the Valancourt re-issue of 2013) is writer John Braine's immensely successful first novel and it stands as an important contribution to a short-lived group of literary works by a variety of writers in Britain exposing the frustration and angst of lower and blue-collar class individuals after World War II. Utel explains "the phrase `Angry Young Men' was coined by journalists and taken up by the media to characterize a loosely defined but still major shift in English literary culture."
Braine (1922-1986) has as his narrator Joe Lampton and Joe paints a very bleak picture of his hometown and roots and makes a start contrast between Dufton and Warley where Joe becomes an accountant for the City Council and believes he has found "a footing in a very different world." It is a "new way of living" and "a place without memories" for Joe where in three months he is more involved in the life of Warley "than I ever had been in my birthplace." In spite of (or possibly because of) these positives, Joe becomes an opportunist. To him success means money, material possessions, power, control, and above all, sex--all the things he has never known in his earlier life--and other people are merely objects who fall onto a rating scale created by him and his friend Charles. For Joe, "life doesn't often bother to be charming once childhood has passed" and Joe starts "manoeuvring for position all the time."
One of Braine's many accomplishments in Room at the Top is that when readers least expect it, Braine introduces some history or qualities into the character of Joe Lampton that humanizes him and allows the reader to understand and at times even sympathize with Lampton who might otherwise just come across as a callous, amoral man of ambition. Given his background, few readers are likely to find Joe's desire for a better life ignoble. The revelation about Joe's parents' death during the blitz is ironic and quite moving. There are passing references to Joe serving as a prisoner of war (although he appears to laugh off the experience as having been better than being killed or having to continue to fly RAF missions).
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Title: Room at the Top
Author: John Braine
Narrator: Kevin Whateley
Format: Abridged
Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-17-07
Publisher: CSA Word
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
Braine's first and most successful novel of working-class "angst" and the struggle of "angry young man" Joe Lampton to climb the social ladder by whatever means possible. A riveting portrait of ambition and class tension, this 20th century classic has been filmed and made into a TV series.
© and (P)1999 CSA Telltapes Ltd.
Members Reviews:
"No More Zombies"
"With an instinct like a water-diviner's where money's concerned," twenty-five-year-old Joe Lampton is ready for "a very different world." His parents dead, having been raised by an aunt in Dufton, an impoverished and dying town with a river running nearby filled with "water as sluggish as pus," and having fulfilled his military service Joe is ready to move on up in life. He wants a life with "no more zombies" as he and his best friend Charles Lufford dubs anyone they "didn't approve of" and Lampton is willing to do anything to make sure that a new and better life is his--at any price.
Room at the Top (1957; with an Introduction by Janine Utel in the Valancourt re-issue of 2013) is writer John Braine's immensely successful first novel and it stands as an important contribution to a short-lived group of literary works by a variety of writers in Britain exposing the frustration and angst of lower and blue-collar class individuals after World War II. Utel explains "the phrase `Angry Young Men' was coined by journalists and taken up by the media to characterize a loosely defined but still major shift in English literary culture."
Braine (1922-1986) has as his narrator Joe Lampton and Joe paints a very bleak picture of his hometown and roots and makes a start contrast between Dufton and Warley where Joe becomes an accountant for the City Council and believes he has found "a footing in a very different world." It is a "new way of living" and "a place without memories" for Joe where in three months he is more involved in the life of Warley "than I ever had been in my birthplace." In spite of (or possibly because of) these positives, Joe becomes an opportunist. To him success means money, material possessions, power, control, and above all, sex--all the things he has never known in his earlier life--and other people are merely objects who fall onto a rating scale created by him and his friend Charles. For Joe, "life doesn't often bother to be charming once childhood has passed" and Joe starts "manoeuvring for position all the time."
One of Braine's many accomplishments in Room at the Top is that when readers least expect it, Braine introduces some history or qualities into the character of Joe Lampton that humanizes him and allows the reader to understand and at times even sympathize with Lampton who might otherwise just come across as a callous, amoral man of ambition. Given his background, few readers are likely to find Joe's desire for a better life ignoble. The revelation about Joe's parents' death during the blitz is ironic and quite moving. There are passing references to Joe serving as a prisoner of war (although he appears to laugh off the experience as having been better than being killed or having to continue to fly RAF missions).