Key to the Door (novel)

Synopsis

Key to the Door is the story of a young man growing up in the grim backstreets of Nottingham, England in the 1950s. He attempts to find a way of shaking off the stifling working class expectations that are thrust upon him from all sectors of society. After leaving school for a soulless job in a cardboard factory and forced into marriage with a woman he neither loves nor respects, he is finally called up for National Service and sent to Malaya during the Emergency where he finds himself an unwilling combatant against Chinese communists, whom he thinks of more as comrades in the class struggle rather than as enemies. Based in part on the author's own experiences in Nottingham and in Malaya, the novel was unfavourably compared to the author’s previous stories of working class life in Nottingham, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, but proved popular enough to be reprinted in 1978.