LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER, THE - Harper Collins

Smith is an incorrigible and defiant young rebel, inhabiting a no-man's land of institutionalised Borstal. Watched over by a phlegmy sunlight, as his steady jog-trot rhythm transports him over an unrelenting, frost-bitten earth, he wonders why, for whom and for what is he running. The film of the story, starring Tom Courtenay and Michael Redgrave, has cult status. Evocative, realistic and superbly written, the other stories in this collection introduces us to, among others: the war-veteran Uncle Ernest who resorts to the oblivion of the beer pump to fill the passage of empty, loveless days; the schoolteacher Mr. Raynor who relies on voyeurism to reward his exasperated, solitary existence.