Search results for ""Author Beryl Bainbridge""

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize Named 'one of the greatest novels of all time' by the ObserverWith a new introduction by Amanda CraigFreda and Brenda are friends spending their days in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory in North London. When a works outing materialises it offers promise for Freda, but terror for Brenda. Unexpected passions run high on the chilly day of liberty and their lives are never the same again. Beryl Bainbridge dazzles readers in this offbeat, haunting yet hilarious novel. 'An outrageously funny and horrifying novel' GRAHAM GREENE'Two very complex, funny female characters. They need each other although they would never admit it' MAXINE PEAKE'Superb... vibrant... profoundly comic' THE TIMES'Few writers offer more control and delight' GUARDIAN

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'The book I wish I'd written . . . Witty, chilling, every word in place' Hilary Mantel, GuardianWartime Liverpool is a place of ration books and jobs in munitions factories. Rita, living with her two aunts Nellie and Margo, is emotionally naïve and withdrawn. When she meets Ira, a GI, at a neighbour's party she falls in love as much with the idea of life as a GI bride as with the man himself. But Nellie and Margo are not so blind...

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In the summer of 1968, Rose sets off for the United States from Kentish Town; in her suitcase a polka-dot dress and a one-way ticket. Together with the sinister man known only as Washington Harold, she goes in search of the charismatic and elusive Dr Wheeler - the man Rose credits with rescuing her from a terrible childhood, and against whom Harold nurses a silent grudge.As the odd couple journey across an America on the brink of paranoid disintegration, their journey mirrors that of Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. As they draw ever closer to the elusive Dr Wheeler, one hot day in June at the Ambassador Hotel in LA, their search finally reaches its terrible climax.

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Edward is throwing a dinner party with Binny , his mistress. Aware that she has long been denied those small intimacies that his wife takes for granted - choosing a birthday present for his sister, for example, or sorting his socks - he wants to give her a chance to feel more involved in his life, to socialise with some of his friends (the discreet ones). Things are a little awkward to begin with - a late start and him having to be away by half past ten - but everything seems to be going well. But then some uninvited, and reather forceful guests arrive, and it doesn't look like Edward is going to make it home on time.

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A brilliant novel about one family's experiences in the Crimean war

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Short-listed for the Booker Prize and named 'one of the greatest novels of all time' by The Observer, this riveting novel which was recently adapted on BBC Radio 4 shows Beryl Bainbridge at her darkly comic best. Freda and Brenda spend their days working in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory. A work outing offers promise for Freda and terror from Brenda; passions run high on that chilly day of freedom, and life after the outing never returns to normal.Inspired by author Beryl Bainbridge's own experiences working at a London wine-factory in the 1970s, The Bottle Factory Outing examines issues of friendship and consent, making the novel timelier than ever. Readers will be dazzled by this offbeat, haunting yet hilarious Guardian fiction prize-winning novel.'An outrageously funny and horrifying story' Graham Greene (Observer)

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A Bainbridge classic

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'This is one of Bainbridge's best books. The close observation and hilarity are underlain by a sense of tragedy as deep as any in fiction' The TimesSHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE IN 1990It is 1950 and the Liverpool repertory theatre company is rehearsing its Christmas production of Peter Pan, a story of childhood innocence and loss. Stella has been taken on as assistant stage manager and quickly becomes obsessed with Meredith, the dissolute director. But it is only when the celebrated O'Hara arrives to take the lead, that a different drama unfolds. In it, he and Stella are bound together in a past that neither dares to interpret.

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'A stellar literary event . . . written with panache and an enviable economy . . . the biggest risk of her literary life' Margaret AtwoodAccording to Queeney is a masterly evocation of the last years of Dr Johnson, arguably Britain's greatest Man of Letters. The time is the 1770s and 1780s and Johnson, having completed his life's major work (he compiled the first ever Dictionary of the English Language) is running an increasingly chaotic life. Torn between his strict morality and his undeclared passion for Mrs Thrale, the wife of an old friend, According to Queeney reveals one of Britain's most wonderful characters in all his wit and glory. Above all, though, this is a story of love and friendship and brilliantly narrated by Queeney, Mrs Thrale's daughter, looking back over her life.

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The chronicler of Sims' life and career, William Fishman, is a masterly recorder of nineteenth century social history, and a true writer. In his hands Sims becomes far more than a bland character devoted to good works, indeed is revealed as an enthusiastic gambler, a frequenter of clubs, a lover of the theatre, a successful playwright and something of a drinker...Aspects of what he recorded are as relevant today as they were then...From Beryl Bainbridge's Preface.The social historian and academic, W J Fishman, has become world-renowned for his many accounts chronicling the working class history of London's East End. Now approaching his ninth decade, Bill Fishman has written yet another vivid account of the life and work of the Victorian journalist, George R Sims. The author believes that Sims' writings and lectures did as much as the work of Charles and William Booth in laying the foundations of the movement to introduce government directed social welfare in the late 19th century, and beyond. Indeed, Beryl Bainbridge, in her Preface, argues that Sims did more to highlight the plight of the poor in Victorian London than Charles Dickens.Yet Sims was also a robust, controversial and thoroughly engaging individual. He even wrote the now some-what forgotten monologue, "Twas the Night before Christmas", and Beryl Bainbridge's splendid Preface ends with remembering her annual recitation of the famous work, at the insistence of her Auntie Nellie, every Christmas Eve.

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'Harriet Said is a highly plotted horror tale that turns the "Obstinate Questionings" of puberty into deadly weapons' NEW YORK TIMES 'An extremely original and disconcerting story' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A sharp, chilling novel . . . The ending has real shock effect' SUNDAY TIMES A girl returns from boarding school to her sleepy Merseyside hometown and waits to be reunited with her childhood friend, Harriet, chief architect of all their past mischief. She roams listlessly along the shoreline and the woods still pitted with wartime trenches and encounters 'the Tsar' - almost old, unhappily married, both dangerously fascinating and repulsive.Pretty, malevolent Harriet finally arrives - and over the course of the long holidays draws her friend into a scheme to beguile then humiliate the Tsar, with disastrous, shocking consequences.A gripping portrayal of adolescent transgression, Beryl Bainbridge's classic first novel remains as subversive today as when it was written.

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'The underrated A Quiet Life is one of the funniest books I have ever read' HILARY MANTEL 'One of the best novelists of her generation' GUARDIAN Seventeen-year-old Alan can't stand rows. But, though the Second World War has ended, peace hangs by a fine thread at home: his troublesome sister Madge creeps off for night-time liaisons with a German POW; their ineffectual father - broken by the hardships of war and an unhappy marriage can't put food on the table despite the family's middle-class manners.Meanwhile, his mother pursues her escapist fantasies in romantic novels and love affairs. Obedient, faithful Alan is trapped among them all, the focus of their jibes and resentment, as inexorably the family heads towards disaster. Beryl Bainbridge's classic early novel is a vintage story of English domestic life, laced with sadness, irony and wicked black humour.

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WINNER OF THE WHITBREAD PRIZE FOR FICTION 1996WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH WRITERS' PRIZE 1997'A narrative both sparkling and deep . . . the cost of raising [the Titanic] is prohibitive; Bainbridge does the next best thing' Hilary Mantel'Brilliant . . . do not miss this novel' Daily Telegraph'A moving, microcosmic portrait of an era's bitter end' The TimesFor the four fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, the Titanic sails towards New York, glittering with luxury, freighted with millionaires and hopefuls. In her labyrinthine passageways the last, secret hours of a small group of passengers are played out, their fate sealed in prose of startling, sublime beauty, as Beryl Bainbridge's haunting masterpiece moves inexorably to its known and terrible end.

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'Extremely lively' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT'A work of art' SCOTSMAN'Genius' SUNDAY TIMESAn old snapshot shows a group of friends lounging in the sunshine, on a weekend in the country at the invitation of bearded, satyric Claude and his wife Julia. The girl in the centre is dreamy Lily, whose latest failed love affair forms the purpose of the weekend, as Lily's friends set out to help her ensnare an unwitting father for her unborn child. Next to her is Norman, a Marxist romantic hell-bent on seducing his milk-white hostess; behind them is old, persecuted Shebah; and slightly apart, the young man on whom all hopes are pinned: quiet, pleasant Edward.Told through the fractured narratives of Claude, Lily, Shebah and Norman, in Beryl Bainbridge's first published novel a darkly comic weekend of friendship and failure unravels.

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