| The Picturegoers | |
| Author: | David Lodge |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Publisher: | MacGibbon & Kee |
| Release Date: | 1960 |
| Media Type: | Print (hardcover, paperback) |
The Picturegoers (1960) is the first novel by British writer David Lodge.
The novel relates the story of a group of Roman Catholics residing in London.[1] It interweaves scenes at and near Brickley Palladium in south-east London with characters like Mark Underwood, a Catholic undergraduate, and Clare representing different attitudes to religion. The novel delves into their relationship of Mark and Clare and the tension that starts to redefine their personalities.[2] Movies are used as a touchstone for exploring Catholic values in a changing world, where the cinema introduces values and behaviors from the greater society that differ from those of the traditional community. Various characters are portrayed, representing, to a certain extent, common types of people in a small earlyish twentieth-century British London neighborhood, though the focus is on one lower-middle-class family.