Speculation has often gone the literary rounds. Could this be the
year when Beryl Bainbridge wins the Booker prize? It hasn't
happened yet, but to be always the bridesmaid and never the bride
in this way gives insufficient credit to a writer who has come so
consistently close and won many other prizes, including Whitbread
Awards and the James Tait Black Memorial. An Awfully Big Adventure
(first published in 1989 and later filmed) is one of several of
Bainbridge's novels to be shortlisted for the Booker. Like those
others, it is worthy of such honour. In this novel, the author (an
actress before she turned to writing) depicts what is familiar to
her - the kaleidoscopic life of the theatre. Under her incisive
spotlight is the 1950 Liverpool repertory company. Stella, the
newly appointed assistant stage manager, takes a leading role in
the unfolding drama, surrounded by a complex cast of characters.
The young heroine dreams that 'love...would be her staircase to the
stars'. She is soon smitten to the core by Meredith, the company's
director, but Stella has some rude awakenings ahead. While actors
strut and fret both on and off the stage during fraught rehearsals
for a Christmas production of Peter Pan, egos are inflated only to
be pierced. According to one review, this is 'vintage bittersweet
Bainbridge'. All the ingredients are certainly present - a full
cast of larger-than-life characters with tangled relationships and
Dickensian quirkiness, wry humour mixed with celebration of the
absurd, a terse, somewhat breathless style that whisks the reader
from one superbly observed vignette to another and the probing
exposure of life's most comic and tragic moments. From the
enigmatic opening to the abrupt climax of the ending, the reader's
attention cannot afford to stray. As central character 'Bees Knees'
O'Hara says, 'Life is full of conflagrations. We can never be sure
when we'll be consumed by the past.' (Kirkus UK)
It is 1950 and the Liverpool reporatory 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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