‘Extremely lively’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
‘A work of art’ SCOTSMAN
‘Genius’ SUNDAY TIMES
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.
‘A work of art’ SCOTSMAN
‘Genius’ SUNDAY TIMES
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.
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Reviews
It is her skewed and deadly grasp of the immediate that makes Bainbridge's work unique. Formerly an actress, she has an uncanny ear for dialogue, a perfect sense of timing and a terse, elliptical narrative style that combine to create a dramatic, or cinematic, tension
A riotous, macabre imagination
[Bainbridge's] genius lies in the comic evocation of the mundane life against which her characters are in revolt
Extremely lively and incisive entertainment
Delicious . . . Very elegant and pleasing . . . A work of art
