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Billy Liar (Penguin Decades) Kindle Edition

by Keith Waterhouse (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 277 ratings

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Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling.

Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar was published in 1959, and captures brilliantly the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small town. It tells the story of Billy Fisher, a Yorkshire teenager unable to stop lying - especially to his three girlfriends. Trapped by his boring job and working-class parents, Billy finds that his only happiness lies in grand plans for his future and fantastical day-dreams of the fictional country Ambrosia.

Print length

180 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Penguin
Publication date

April 1, 2010
File size

3975 KB
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About the Author

Keith Waterhouse was born in Leeds in 1929. He has written extensively for film, tv and newspapers, and his play Jeffrey Barnard is Unwell was a West End hit in the 1990s. Billy Liar is his most famous book, and was an equally famous film, directed by John Schlesinger, starring Tom Courtenay. He died in 2009.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003FXCS72
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin (April 1, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 1, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3975 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 180 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #2,308,413 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,465 in Men, Women & Relationships Humor
- #4,153 in Humor & Entertainment (Kindle Store)
- #6,090 in Dark Humor

Customer Reviews:
4.2 277 ratings

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Keith Waterhouse
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Nick Bentley
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Nick Bentley is Senior Lecturer in English literature at Keele University in the UK. His main research interests are in post-1945 British fiction and literary and cultural theory. He is author of Radical Fictions: The English Novel in the 1950s (Peter Lang, 2007) and Contemporary British Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2008), and editor of British Fiction of the 1990s (Routledge, 2005). He has published journal articles and book chapters on Julian Barnes, Zadie Smith, Doris Lessing, Colin MacInnes, Sam Selvon and the representation of youth in British New Left writing. He is currently working on two monographs: one on Martin Amis for the Writers and Their Work series, and one on the representation of youth subcultures in post-war British fiction.
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4.2 out of 5

277 global ratings

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Paul D. Brazill Presents ...

Bittersweet

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2023

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‘A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.’ - Muhammad Ali.

The shadow of Billy Liar was loosely draped over the sagging shoulders of many working class youths born in the '60s and growing up -after a fashion - in the ‘70s. There was the marvellous 1963 film, of course, with the splendid Tom Courtney and Julie Christie - ‘she makes me go misty’. There was even a sit-com, and Keith Waterhouse’s 1959 novel and its titular protagonist were such a part of our cultural heritage that referring to someone as ‘a bit of a Billy Liar’ was commonplace.

Billy Liar is the story of Billy Fisher, a 19 year old fantasist who lives with his parents and works for the local undertakers. It’s grim up north and Billy dreams of leaving but, well, you know …

Its a cracking read, funny, touching and, well, frustrating. Or, more to the point, rereading it recently - into my sixties with a whimper if not a bang- I realised just how frustrating Billy himself is. Yes, other characters are annoying but Billy is no anti-hero, more of a symbol of everyone’s mealy-mouthed moments of disappointment. Billy Liar is a tragi-comedy for sure and a damned good one at that, but its certainly more bitter than sweet.

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R. M. Peterson

"Here lies Billy Fisher"

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2014

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That is what Billy Fisher ruefully tells one of his girlfriends his tombstone epitaph will be, after another one of his tales had been exposed as an elaborate hoax (the one about his father having been the captain of a destroyer and involved in the sinking of the "Graf Spee" before being imprisoned for three years in a POW camp). He says it in an effort to win back a measure of sympathy, not because he is truly contrite.

Billy is about nineteen. He lives with his working class parents and his crotchety grandmother in Stradhoughton (a provincial city in England, apparently modeled after Leeds). He is employed as a clerk for an undertaker, although he does little actual work and, moreover, perversely refuses to carry out some of the simple tasks assigned him. He has three girlfriends and in the course of the one Saturday encompassed by the novel he tells each of them that he is engaged to her. (This causes problems when they run into one another at a club in the evening.) In many ways, Billy is the quintessential loser. But what most distinguishes him is that he always is telling stories. Perhaps it is because of an overheated imagination; perhaps it is due to boredom with a stultifying life; maybe it's because he fancies himself a stand-up comedian; or possibly it is because Billy, at bottom, is a pathological liar.

BILLY LIAR is a clever, interesting novel, but it does not quite cohere. It is strong in capturing the tropes of interpersonal relations, especially clichéd behavior and speech. It supposedly is quite sensitive to Yorkshire dialect, something that I am not really in a position to appreciate. At times it is very funny, although much of the humor is of the snarky, rebellious sort typical of a disaffected nineteen-year-old. (Billy Fisher reminds me a little of Holden Caulfield, although Billy has a much bleaker existence to rebel against.) While often funny, in the end the novel is sad.

BILLY LIAR is now commonly regarded as one of the British novels from the Fifties that realistically portrays the drab and dreary life of the English working class. It, however, does not do so as effectively as does "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" by Alan Sillitoe. Perhaps that is because Keith Waterhouse does not make a strong case for Billy's habitual fabrication being causally related to his socioeconomic environment. Therefore, Billy's problems with the truth (and reality) end up diverting some of the reader's attention away from the plight of the urban working class.

3 people found this helpful

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M. T. Lawrence

Entertaining

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2010

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"Billy Liar" is a virtuoso performance by John Simm. It's not just the moments when he's voicing multiple characters and making each distinct, it's the moments when Billy slips into a Yorkshire accent as his friend Arthur puts on his own Yorkshire accent, then Billy play-acts a different character with a different accent--and John Simm keeps this all perfectly clear and understandable. In other scenes there are characters imitating American accents, London accents, all while remaining "in character." Simm creates a number of very believable female characters as well
. The book "Billy Liar" is a darker comedy than I expected--poised between kitchen-sink realism of "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" and the blast of fresh air that was the Beatles. As audiobooks go, this is a bravura performance and worth every unabridged minute.

8 people found this helpful

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Jeff Thomas

Good Writing - Distant Story

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2015

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Great writing, but I just don't get it. Very British. Very 50's

One person found this helpful

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Poe ballantine

Sharply written

Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2014

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I got this book solely to study the Yorkshire dialect and found it very useful. It's also a nice capsule of pre-counterculture England. It's a fascinating story about a chap who can't get himself straight, largely because he's incapable of the truth. Nice lesson: no matter how much you might achieve through deception, in the end all you've done is deceived yourself. As I've said in other reviews, I'm less fond these days of cynical portraits of society, and this is another one.

One person found this helpful

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David Ellaby

Wonderful novel

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2016

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Remember reading this book in the 60s and it is still outstanding.Shows the angst of young men growing up.Along with A Kind Of Loving I rate this book highly.

One person found this helpful

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genesis

Good book

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2018

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Loved the book!

One person found this helpful

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Kim Clayton

I couldn’t finish this

Reviewed in Australia on January 31, 2020

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I gave up, perhaps it might have gone somewhere, but I just didn’t find it at all funny and didn’t like the characters.

AlisonW

Absolute classic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 26, 2016

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A wonderful book. As the name suggests, the hero, Billy, is a compulsive liar. He lives in a fantasy world and his lies get him into deeper and deeper trouble. The narrative takes place over one single day in Billy’s life, and in that short space of time, Waterhouse brilliantly conveys Billy’s frustration with his life, and his longing for something else, away from the small town mentality of the fictional Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton.
The wonderful dry humour, the comedic situations that are almost farcical, are tempered by a sadness deep at the heart of this book. Billy needs something more, but he’s his own worst enemy. He’s a complex character too; the lies he tells verge on cruelty, and his treatment of Barbara and the dodgy sounding passion pills are worrying to say the least.
But at the heart of this story is a brilliantly-drawn character who is bigger than the life he’s been given, the life he can’t escape – unless it’s to his fictional world, ‘Ambrosia’ where he can be the man he dreams of being. In Stradhoughton, he’s out of place, trapped where he doesn’t belong, surrounded by people he doesn’t understand. During the evening, he watches the people around him, as Saturday night begins:
‘I stood for a quarter of an hour at a time, watching them get off buses and disperse themselves about the streets. I was amazed and intrigued that they should all be content to be nobody but themselves.’
This is a real classic. Not a word is wasted. Beautifully executed, evocative prose and an absolute masterclass in characterisation. Billy Liar is a must read.

2 people found this helpful

johnclive

Billy Liar...50 years later !

Reviewed in France on January 30, 2016

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A book I studied at school and very much enjoyed, it hasn't aged ! Nice to have the digital version.

Herr Kaufrausch

Lügenbilly auf dem Weg zum Ruhm

Reviewed in Germany on January 17, 2015

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Ich habe das Buch auf deutsch gelesen und war begeistert.
Billy, ein Schulabgänger, verdient seinen Lebensunterhalt in einem Bestattungsunternehmen und ist natürlich komplett unterfordert.
Er träumt von einer Karriere in London, als Texter für einen bekannten Humoristen.
Seine Traumtänzerei bringt ihn mit der realen Welt in gewaltige Schwierigkeiten.
Das Buch beginnt an einem Samstag Morgen und mit vielen guten Vorsätzen und Plänen, steigert sich über den ganzen Tag von Katastrophe zu Katastrophe und endet schließlich nachts auf dem Bahnhof seines Nestes, von dem er - obwohl schon die Fahrkarte in der Tasche - NICHT nach London fährt.
Nach dem sehr lustigen Trubel seiner Verstrickungen in immer neue Lügen steht er mit leeren Händen und fast ohne Freunde da, nur Liz, eine von seinen Freundinnen bleibt im treu.
Aber zu dem Schritt, den sie von ihm verlangt, ist er noch nicht bereit, und so sieht er mit gemischten Gefühlen dem Alltag in seinem heimatlichen Nest entgegen.

Wenn man das dt. Exemplar gelesen hat fällt einem die englische Version über weite Strecken leicht, erschwerend wirken aber Dialekt und Jugendsprache.

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Kindle Customer

A Greta Insight into Procrastination.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 29, 2013

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A very funny and enjoyable read about growing up in England in the 20th century that anyone can get into.