Billy Liar (Penguin Decades)

Product Information

On 4 September 2009, a statement released by his family announced that Waterhouse had died quietly in his sleep at his home in London.

Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse | Waterstones

Although Billy Liar, a lad from Yorkshire was an interesting character, the majority of the jokes that were featured, I simply didn’t find amusing. Anyway, this story is a simple, funny, kinda sad look at Billy, a young guy who feels like he should be doing more with his life and is tired of the b.

When he notices the calendars in his wardrobe, he dreams of being imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs for the crime of pocketing the postage money. It is this quality that stands Billy Liar head and shoulders above others of the time, it hasn't dated because at its heart there are no politics, young men still struggle with their identity and purpose in life and suffer from being misunderstood by those closest to them. So with the underage drinking, back-talking to parents, premarital sex and direct (at least for the 1950s) references to birth control, I imagine that this book was quite rebellious and ground-breaking in its day. Tom Courtenay, who was born in Hull, featured in many films located in Yorkshire, including The Dresser, also partly filmed in Bradford at the Alhambra Theatre.

BILLY LIAR ON LOCATION - LEEDS, BRADFORD | Yorkshire Film Archive BILLY LIAR ON LOCATION - LEEDS, BRADFORD | Yorkshire Film Archive

And it is not the fault of his parents or the people around him but it is the social and economic upheavals of the world and the times that have given birth to this flawed yet utterly believable human being. Shadrack himself, young adult Billy Fisher often daydreams as a means of escape from what he considers his less than satisfying life, and in the process will tell bald-faced lies to advance his fantasy narrative.Billy can be infantile, insensitive and infuriating, and his worthwhile observations have to be extracted from a slew of stream-of-consciousness inanities. The kind of reckless, mischievous yet helpless and desperate spirit that seeks some escape when life and the rest of the world get too humdrum around us that wills us to do irrational and unreasonable things just to escape this boredom for a while? e. no one in Boon's entourage actually read what he sent Boon, including Boon himself), he planning on approaching Boon, who coincidentally is in town, to nail down the details of employment. Brilliantly written, Billy Liar perfectly captures that moment when adult responsibilities impinge on teenage dreams, as Billy attempts to avoid responsibility, and rise above conformity and mediocrity.