The Death of William Posters

"This novel, filled with minor imperfections, the scabs of real scars, describes the arc of a man bursting free from the deathly grip of a dying world. Frank Dawley is a workingman alienated from machine, wife, and finally, at the close of this adventure, Western society. He is haunted by "William Posters," a projection of the last resistance to the debilitating life of the Midlands. Were it not for his politics, we could call Dawley "Lawrencian," for in his relationships with women he is intensely spiritual in his lust for human contact. Were it not for his openness to love, his unruly sense of life and acute physical nature -- made explicit in an exciting, metaphoric language, --his final act, after leaving behind a wife, two women, England, and joining the Algerian FLN might easily be a Malraux-like hangover from the Thirties. Together, Dawley's spirituality, his political decision and the style in which he is rendered make a faulted novel of insurgent power and prove that Sillitoe may one day return from what he calls "the trek without print or maps," his Hegira beyond gesture, and deliver a narrative as worthy as his intentions."--Kirkus.