Recommendations
Books Like A Taste of Honey
Best books to read after A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney
Readers who love A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney are drawn to its combination of authentic working-class voice, the matter-of-fact treatment of race and homosexuality, and the extraordinary resilience of Jo — they want plays and novels that deal with working-class female experience in postwar Britain, the kitchen-sink drama tradition, and the capacity to form genuine relationships despite adverse circumstances.
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Buy on AmazonLook Back in Anger
by John Osborne
The companion in the British working-class drama tradition — Jimmy Porter's rage in the Midlands flat. The companion play of the same period and tradition, but organized around the opposite of Jo: where Jimmy is consumed by rage, Jo is defined by resilience
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Buy on AmazonRoots
by Arnold Wesker
The companion in the British working-class drama tradition — Beatie Bryant returning from London to her Norfolk family. The companion play organized around the same class awakening from a female perspective: both Jo and Beatie are working-class women trying to understand the world they are in
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Buy on AmazonUp the Junction
by Nell Dunn
Dunn's companion sketches of working-class women in Battersea. The companion prose work organized around the same subject: the lives of working-class women in Britain in the early 1960s, with the same matter-of-fact treatment of sex, pregnancy, and poverty
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Buy on AmazonSaturday Night and Sunday Morning
by Alan Sillitoe
Sillitoe's companion novel in the working-class tradition — Arthur Seaton in Nottingham. The companion prose work: an investigation of the same class world from a male perspective, organized around the same social landscape that A Taste of Honey inhabits
- 5Buy on Amazon
Poor Cow
by Nell Dunn
Dunn's companion novel about Joy — a young working-class woman in London. The companion investigation of working-class female resilience: Joy and Jo are companion figures, both defined by the capacity to keep going in the face of circumstances that do not improve
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Buy on AmazonThe Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
by Alan Sillitoe
Sillitoe's companion short story collection — Smith at the Borstal. The companion investigation of working-class experience and the institutions that try to manage it; Smith's refusal to win the race is the companion act of resistance to Jo's refusal to be ashamed
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Buy on AmazonThe L-Shaped Room
by Lynne Reid Banks
Banks's companion novel about Jane — an unmarried pregnant woman in 1950s London. The companion investigation of the same subject as A Taste of Honey: what happens to a young woman who is pregnant and alone in a class-stratified society that has not yet developed the language to support her?
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Buy on AmazonCathy Come Home
by Jeremy Sandford
Sandford's companion BBC television play about a young working-class couple who lose their home. The companion work in the British social-realist tradition organized around the same question: what happens to working-class women and children when the support systems fail?
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