eBook Hard Facts (CH) (Charnwood Library) ePub

Wafi

Characterisation and settings really well crafted. I have read most of his books and always found them elegant and very readable.

Still In Mind

I may be bias by the fact I was born and bred in the location of this book. His beautiful use of the English language to describe the period in which it was set, and the humanity he proscribed to the characters. I would like to read more of this writer.

Tamesya

A beautifully written book, wish all of his books were available as ebooks. A wonderful escape from our current violent greedy world..

Itiannta

Another slab of life in late nineteenth century Manchester produced by one of the city's most celebrated novelists. Howard Spring might be forgotten now, except, perhaps, for FAME IS THE SPUR (1940, filmed 1947) but in his time he was a bestselling writer of historical fiction.

Theodore Chrystal begins life as a young curate in Levenshulme, a grimy suburb of Manchester rife with poverty and squalor. He finds it difficult to fit in - not only because the lifestyle is so totally alien to a respectable man brought up in the south of England, but because he feels inhibited by the influence of Mr. Burnside, the local vicar who enjoys something of a reputation as a helpmate to the poor. Burnside has provided a shoulder to cry on for brother and sister Alec and Elsie Dillworth, who have to flee from their drunken and violent father and their equally dypsomaniac mother on several occasions.

It seems, however, that Dillworth has made good. Under the patronage of Daniel Dunkerley, the young man has become editor of HARD FACTS, a forerunner of the twentieth century tabloid newspaper that climbs to a daily circulation of one million-plus copies. Yet it seems that Dillworth has a profound dislike for the job, as he would rather pursue a career as a writer, as well as protecting his sister from corruption. In the past Elsie has been so poor that she has had to earn money as a whore, even though she has now left that profession.

Theodore encounters Elsie and falls in love with he, without knowing about her shady past, but has to contend with Alec, who seems over-protective towards his sister. Meanwhile Theodore also has to cope with the covert advances of Lady Pinson, a rich widow living in the south ...

The plot of HARD FACTS takes time to get going: perhaps Spring spends a little too much time on flashbacks and not enough on the realities of contemporary life. However, when it does burst into life, the story is a vivid page-turner. The title not only refers to the newspaper, but to the "Hard Facts" about life in industrial Manchester that Theodore is largely unaware of; it is only at the end that they are revealed to him in a shocking and violent denlouement.

As usual Spring builds up a vivid portrait of life in the industrial north, allied to a sympathy for his characters, the majority of whom have to cope with life as best they can, with no social or material advantages to aid them.