the loneliness of the long distance runner

i wanted to read this book because the title appealed to me, even though i normally don't really like collections of short stories (i prefer a good long novel). all these stories come back to the same, very interesting, themes though: loneliness and the life of the working class in nottingham just before the second world war. there's something very gripping about most of them. in an interview, alan sillitoe said: i realised that the quality of telling the story was the important thing. there are only ten or twelve plots in the world; it's how they're handled that matters. he surely handled them well.