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9781961341920

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Reviews

""Bainbridge possesses a peculiarly acute ear for the desultory chatter of people who have given up expecting very much out of life . . . A former actress herself, Ms. Bainbridge chronicles the backstage antics of her fictional theater company with knowing aplomb. She captures its air of shabby amateurism with a couple of flicks of the wrist, conjures up its petty in-fighting with a few bright lines of dialogue. When it comes to detailing the absurdities of her characters' behavior, she can be merciless, collecting all their lies, prejudices and self-delusions in order to display them for the reader's entertainment. Yet there's nothing condescending or cruel about her portraits."" --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review ""A formidably clever novelist."" --The Observer ""She is a nice, unpretentious sort of writer with a boozy, have-a-go attitude."" --Richard Ingrams ""Her genius lies in that territory which she has made entirely her own, in the comic evocation of the flat and mundane life against which her characters are in perpetual and ineffectual revolt."" --Peter Ackroyd, The Sunday Times ""[Beryl Bainbridge] united a riotous, macabre imagination with a talent for wit and compression."" --Alex Clarke, The Daily Telegraph ""Beryl Bainbridge's writing makes everyone else's prose look flabby."" --Susannah Clapp, London Review of Books ""Imagine Priestley's The Good Companions as written by Gogol and you will have some idea of the mixture of waggish humour and sordid pathos in Bainbridge's novel . . . Bainbridge has the theatre in her bones and her matter-of-fact descriptions of applying make-up and adjusting the lighting contrast deftly with the macabre story she has to tell. Her disconcerting humour, her ability to establish character in the flick of a sentence, her clarity of style are all confidently employed in this impressive novel, as well as the poignant appraisal of the not-very-distant past that is perhaps her own mournful trademark and gives her a unique place among British novelists."" --Penny Perrick, The Sunday Times ""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 Times ""A subtle schizophrenic insight into adult relationships . . . Bainbridge's understated prose and obsessive eye for the smallest and most telling of details have never been better employed."" --Time Out

""Wickedly diverting . . . Poignant, arresting and often funny, an accumulation of such small, telling details effectively recreates the atmosphere of Liverpool in the mid-'50s: a gritty, exhausted city pocked by bomb damage, only just beginning to emerge from the anguish of the war . . . Succinct and tart, An Awfully Big Adventure never takes itself too seriously, the ironic intent underlined by a title suggesting a bedtime story for grown-ups. Gleefully exploiting the limits of her material, Bainbridge manages, against all the odds, to recycle stock characters and situations into a sophisticated entertainment."" --Elaine Kendall, Los Angeles Times ""An air of Pinteresque menace and Sparkian malice lingers around the margins of her fiction . . . The prose in these books is dry, pointed and idiomatic; Ms. Bainbridge possesses a peculiarly acute ear for the desultory chatter of people who have given up expecting very much out of life . . . A former actress herself, Ms. Bainbridge chronicles the backstage antics of her fictional theater company with knowing aplomb. She captures its air of shabby amateurism with a couple of flicks of the wrist, conjures up its petty in-fighting with a few bright lines of dialogue."" --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review ""A Booker Prize nominee, Bainbridge's latest novel is a compelling read, again demonstrating her acuity of observation and darkly comic view of life. In Stella Bradshaw, a teenage aspiring actress from the slums of Liverpool, Bainbridge limns a tough but beguiling character . . . Her portrait of a seedy repertory troupe, whose members histrionically indulge in love affairs and unrequited passions, is classic . . . Bainbridge's prose brims with pithy insights tinged with sardonic humor, and her plot moves swiftly to a chilling conclusion."" --Publishers Weekly ""A formidably clever novelist.""--The Observer ""She is a nice, unpretentious sort of writer with a boozy, have-a-go attitude."" --Richard Ingrams ""Her genius lies in that territory which she has made entirely her own, in the comic evocation of the flat and mundane life against which her characters are in perpetual and ineffectual revolt."" --Peter Ackroyd, The Sunday Times ""[Beryl Bainbridge] united a riotous, macabre imagination with a talent for wit and compression."" --Alex Clarke, The Daily Telegraph ""Beryl Bainbridge's writing makes everyone else's prose look flabby."" --Susannah Clapp, London Review of Books ""Imagine Priestley's The Good Companions as written by Gogol and you will have some idea of the mixture of waggish humour and sordid pathos in Bainbridge's novel . . . Bainbridge has the theatre in her bones . . . Her disconcerting humour, her ability to establish character in the flick of a sentence, her clarity of style are all confidently employed in this impressive novel, as well as the poignant appraisal of the not-very-distant past that is perhaps her own mournful trademark and gives her a unique place among British novelists."" --Penny Perrick, The Sunday Times ""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 Times ""A subtle schizophrenic insight into adult relationships . . . Bainbridge's understated prose and obsessive eye for the smallest and most telling of details have never been better employed."" --Time Out

""Wickedly diverting . . . Poignant, arresting and often funny, an accumulation of such small, telling details effectively recreates the atmosphere of Liverpool in the mid-'50s: a gritty, exhausted city pocked by bomb damage, only just beginning to emerge from the anguish of the war . . . Succinct and tart, An Awfully Big Adventure never takes itself too seriously, the ironic intent underlined by a title suggesting a bedtime story for grown-ups. Gleefully exploiting the limits of her material, Bainbridge manages, against all the odds, to recycle stock characters and situations into a sophisticated entertainment."" --Elaine Kendall, Los Angeles Times ""An air of Pinteresque menace and Sparkian malice lingers around the margins of her fiction . . . The prose in these books is dry, pointed and idiomatic; Ms. Bainbridge possesses a peculiarly acute ear for the desultory chatter of people who have given up expecting very much out of life . . . A former actress herself, Ms. Bainbridge chronicles the backstage antics of her fictional theater company with knowing aplomb. She captures its air of shabby amateurism with a couple of flicks of the wrist, conjures up its petty in-fighting with a few bright lines of dialogue."" --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review ""A Booker Prize nominee, Bainbridge's latest novel is a compelling read, again demonstrating her acuity of observation and darkly comic view of life. In Stella Bradshaw, a teenage aspiring actress from the slums of Liverpool, Bainbridge limns a tough but beguiling character . . . Her portrait of a seedy repertory troupe, whose members histrionically indulge in love affairs and unrequited passions, is classic . . . Bainbridge's prose brims with pithy insights tinged with sardonic humor, and her plot moves swiftly to a chilling conclusion."" --Publishers Weekly ""A formidably clever novelist."" --The Observer ""She is a nice, unpretentious sort of writer with a boozy, have-a-go attitude."" --Richard Ingrams ""Her genius lies in that territory which she has made entirely her own, in the comic evocation of the flat and mundane life against which her characters are in perpetual and ineffectual revolt."" --Peter Ackroyd, The Sunday Times ""[Beryl Bainbridge] united a riotous, macabre imagination with a talent for wit and compression."" --Alex Clarke, The Daily Telegraph ""Beryl Bainbridge's writing makes everyone else's prose look flabby."" --Susannah Clapp, London Review of Books ""Imagine Priestley's The Good Companions as written by Gogol and you will have some idea of the mixture of waggish humour and sordid pathos in Bainbridge's novel . . . Bainbridge has the theatre in her bones . . . Her disconcerting humour, her ability to establish character in the flick of a sentence, her clarity of style are all confidently employed in this impressive novel, as well as the poignant appraisal of the not-very-distant past that is perhaps her own mournful trademark and gives her a unique place among British novelists."" --Penny Perrick, The Sunday Times ""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 Times ""A subtle schizophrenic insight into adult relationships . . . Bainbridge's understated prose and obsessive eye for the smallest and most telling of details have never been better employed."" --Time Out

Author Information

Dame Beryl Bainbridgean experience she drew on later when writing An Awfully Big Adventure, later made into a 1995 film, directed by Mike Newell, starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. Five of her seventeen novels were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, which garnered her the nickname ""the Booker Bridesmaid""; in 2011, a special Man Booker 'Best-of Beryl' Prize was awarded in her honor. Master Georgie (1998) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and both Injury Time (1977) and Every Man for Himself (1996) were awarded the Whitbread Novel of the Year Prize. Also a talented painter, she lived for many years in a house crammed with eccentric Victoriania in London's Camden Town, where visitors were forced to squeeze past the stuffed buffalo in her entrance hall.

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