Sillitoe's later work has often explored [the contradiction] of a developed, indignant, and compassionate social sense [combined] with a strong urge to push out into fantasy or even nightmare. The Storyteller faces the problem (if problem it can be called) head on….

Ernest Cotgrave discovers, one day in school, that he can divert the attentions of the school bully by spinning out a weird and wonderful tale about a mythical seafaring uncle…. The hero is the creator of other characters, one of whom is homicidally pursuing him on [a] ship; he is his own creation, also, acutely conscious that he wants to be things, not just tell them; and he is Sillitoe himself—except that Sillitoe, as super-ego narrator, is also the trim radio officer of the ship, with his mastery of the machinery for transmitting messages.

Sillitoe runs two risks in this elaborate allegory about the nature...