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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)
For 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.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and named 'one of the greatest
novels of all time' by the Observer, this riveting novel shows
Beryl Bainbridge at her darkly comic best Freda 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 'Superb... taut in construction, expansive in
characterisation, vibrant in atmosphere and profoundly comic' The
Times 'The masterful restraint of Beryl Bainbridge's sentences
reveals an author in complete control of her artistry' Guardian
'Two very complex, funny female characters. They need each other
although they would never admit it' Maxine Peake
'The book I wish I'd written . . . Witty, chilling, every word in
place' Hilary Mantel, Guardian Wartime Liverpool is a place of
ration books and jobs in munitions factories. Rita, living with her
two aunts Nellie and Margo, is emotionally naive 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...
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.
A brilliantly realized evocation of the thoughts and voices of
Captain Scott and the four men with him, who suffered extraordinary
hardships before finally dying during their 1912 attempt to be the
first to reach the South Pole. 'A whole lost era of fantastic
courage, determination, idealism, curiosity, boyish foolishness and
class mores is brought brilliantly and touchingly back by
Bainbridge's penetrating psychological acumen and her superb scene
and action painting...A masterly achievement, not to be missed by
anyone who cherishes a strong, meaningful story beautifully told'
Publishers Weekly The Birthday Boys is one of Beryl Bainbridge's
most acclaimed novels, telling the story of Scott's doomed
expedition through the voices of five men on the voyage. As Scott,
Petty Officer Taff Evans, ship's doctor Dr Edward Wilson,
Lieutenant Henry Bowers and Captain Lawrence Oates step forward for
their place in the narrative, the reader is gripped by the the
characters themselves alongside the vividly evoked period.
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A Quiet Life (Paperback)
Beryl Bainbridge; Introduction by Alex Clark
1
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R305
R247
Discovery Miles 2 470
Save R58 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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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.
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.
When Master Georgie - George Hardy, surgeon and photographer - sets off from the cold squalor of Victorian Liverpool for the heat and glitter of the Bosphorus to offer his services in the Crimea, there straggles behind him a small caravan of devoted followers; Myrtle, his adoring adoptive sister; lapsed geologist Dr Potter; and photographer’s assistant and sometime fire-eater Pompey Jones, all of them driven onwards through a rising tide of death and disease by a shared and mysterious guilt. Combining a breathtaking eye for beauty with a visceral understanding of mortality, Beryl Bainbridge exposes her enigmatic hero as tenderly and unsparingly as she reveals the filth and misery of war, and creates a novel of luminous depth and extraordinary intensity.
An 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.
According 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.
An 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.
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.
Paranoid, wilful, lazy, the young Adolf Hitler turns up in Liverpool to stay with his brother Alois and sister-in-law Bridget. Hailed by Alois as a student and an artist, Adolf soon irritates his family beyond measure by his constant sponging and his tendency to get into serious trouble with the English. Surely this is a young man who will never amount to anything.
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