Beryl Bainbridge's Books

A Quiet Life

A Novel

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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The tragicomic tale of a dysfunctional middle-class family in postwar England from the award-winning author of Injury Time. Though the Second World War has ended, times are anything but peaceful for seventeen-year-old Alan. His father, an entrepreneur who was once able to provide the family with a comfortable life, is now struggling to put food on the table. Meanwhile, Alan’s mother dresses as if money is plentiful and spends all her time avoiding her husband, indulging in the escapism of romance novels, and engaging in real-world love affairs. And as if a household struck by poverty and marital trouble isn’t enough, Alan’s bohemian sister, Madge, has been sneaking off into the sand dunes for lusty rendezvous with a German POW. All Alan wants is for his sister to stop cavorting around and driving their father mad—and for a pretty choir girl named Janet to notice him. But the more he wishes for a normal life, the more chaotic it becomes. Everyone in his family is hiding something, not only from one another but also from themselves. And they’re all desperately clinging to something that is inevitably falling apart. Award-winning British author Beryl Bainbridge has a keen eye for the dark humor that lurks in misery and a knack for illuminating the emotional rubble of postwar England. A Quiet Life is an entertaining family drama that is at once a quick read and a lasting portrait of twentieth-century life.

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Page Count

130

Publisher

Open Road Media

Published Date

ISBN 10

1504039912

ISBN 13

9781504039918

According to Queeney

A Novel

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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According to Queeney

A Novel

By: Beryl Bainbridge

This historical novel set during the eighteenth century recounts the tumultuous final years of famed English lexicographer and poet Samuel Johnson. In 1764, Britain’s greatest man of letters—the writer of the first English dictionary—shut himself in his room and refused to come out. Exhausted from working on an edition of Shakespeare’s plays, Samuel Johnson had fallen into a deep depression. He refused to eat and only opened his door to cry out incomprehensible phrases or empty his chamber pot. Finally, a priest was able to lure the scholar out of confinement, and, as he did, Johnson’s friend Henry Thrales arrived. Shocked by Johnson’s fit of madness, Thrales promptly whisked the man away for recuperation at a country mansion south of London. Thus began one of the happiest periods of Johnson’s life. At the Thrales residence in Streatham, Johnson regained his sanity and engaged in family life. He selected books for the estate’s library, joked around at parties, and became close to Thrales’s wife, Hester. But as the years passed, the affection between Johnson and Hester developed into a dark romantic affair, the Thrales’s daughter grew up and became aware of her mother’s emotional unavailability, and Johnson’s passions and eccentricities led to cumbersome moral and spiritual dilemmas. With chapter titles taken from entries in Johnson’s legendary dictionary, lauded British author Beryl Bainbridge paints a well-rounded portrait of an extraordinary man and his all-too-human experiences. Written from the perspective of the Thrales’s daughter, According to Queeney heightens fact with fiction, sincerity with irony, and humor with despair. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, it is a captivating account of the Georgian era, lending modern insight to British history.

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Page Count

188

Publisher

Open Road Media

Published Date

ISBN 10

1504039971

ISBN 13

9781504039970

The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume One

An Awfully Big Adventure, The Birthday Boys, and Master Georgie

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume One

An Awfully Big Adventure, The Birthday Boys, and Master Georgie

By: Beryl Bainbridge

Three unforgettable novels from the “subversive and ever-mischievous imagination” of a celebrated British author and five-time Man Booker Prize nominee (The New York Times). With crisp prose and sardonic wit, Dame Beryl Bainbridge established a unique position for herself in the landscape of modern British literature. In the three novels collected here, Bainbridge explores disasters both epic and intimate, drawing inspiration from historical figures as well as her own life experiences to produce tightly woven tales that are at once ironic and honest, subtle and surprising. An Awfully Big Adventure: In postwar Liverpool, a teenage girl joins a local theater troupe and discovers the unflattering truths behind the gloss of adulthood. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this atmospheric novel was adapted into a film starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. “A former actress herself, Ms. Bainbridge chronicles the backstage antics of her fictional theater company with knowing aplomb.” —The New York Times The Birthday Boys: In 1910, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott led a harrowing race to the South Pole. With this imaginative yet historically accurate retelling of their famous and ill-fated mission, “Bainbridge has quite surpassed herself” (Financial Times). “Equally convincing in its evocations of the icy, unendurable landscape without, and the chilling interior landscapes of damaged souls.” —The Sunday Telegraph Master Georgie: The story of a British surgeon journeying toward the horrors of the Crimean War is told from the perspective of three companions who each believe they knew him best. This “stunning” novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won numerous awards (The New Yorker). “Accomplished with stupendous technical skill . . . a true novelist’s novel.” —The Guardian

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Page Count

351

Publisher

Open Road Media

Published Date

ISBN 10

1504052404

ISBN 13

9781504052405

The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume One

An Awfully Big Adventure, The Birthday Boys, and Master Georgie

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume One

An Awfully Big Adventure, The Birthday Boys, and Master Georgie

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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351

Publisher

Open Road Media

Published Date

ISBN 10

1504052404

ISBN 13

9781504052405

A Quiet Life

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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A Quiet Life

By: Beryl Bainbridge

England efter 2. verdenskrig. Allans søster Madge ses sammen med en tysk krigsfange. Familien er oprevet

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156

Published Date

ISBN 10

0006540082

ISBN 13

9780006540083

Master Georgie

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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Master Georgie

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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.

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Page Count

224

Published Date

ISBN 10

0349112223

ISBN 13

9780349112220

A Weekend With Claude

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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A Weekend With Claude

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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.

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Page Count

100

Publisher

Virago

Published Date

ISBN 10

1405513470

ISBN 13

9781405513470

An Awfully Big Adventure

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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An Awfully Big Adventure

By: Beryl Bainbridge

This provocative and compelling novel by one of Britian's leading writers tells the darkly humorous tale of Stella, a star-struck, teenaged actress caught in the backstage intrigue of a 1950s Liverpool theater repertory company. Stella romances the director of a production of Peter Pan with consequences that would be uproariously funny if they were not so dire. The play becomes a metaphor for the darker side of youth as Stella is drawn into very adult mayhem.

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Page Count

210

Publisher

Isis-Oasis

Published Date

ISBN 10

1856952649

ISBN 13

9781856952644

The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress

By: Beryl Bainbridge

In the tumultuous spring of 1968 a young English woman, Rose, travels from London to the United States to meet a man she knows as Washington Harold. In her suitcase are a polka dot dress and a one-way ticket. In an America recently convulsed by the April assassination of Martin Luther King and subsequent urban riots, they begin a search for the charismatic and elusive Dr. Wheeler- sage, prophet and, possibly, redeemer-who rescued Rose from a dreadful childhood and against whom Harold holds a seething grudge. As they follow their quarry cross-country in a camper they encounter the odd remnants of Wheeler acolytes who harbor festering cultural and political grievances. Along the way, a famous artist is shot in New York, mutilated soldiers are evacuated from Vietnam, race hatred explodes in ghettos and suburbs and casual madness blossoms at revival meetings. Many believe America's only hope is presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, whose campaign trail echoes Rose and Harold's pilgrimage. Both will conclude in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel one infamous night in June. Subversive, sinister and marvelously vivid, Beryl Bainbridge's great last novel evokes a nation on the brink of self-destruction with artful brilliance.

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Page Count

138

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1609459040

ISBN 13

9781609459048

Harriet Said...

A Virago Modern Classic

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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Harriet Said...

A Virago Modern Classic

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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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Page Count

122

Publisher

Virago

Published Date

ISBN 10

1405513748

ISBN 13

9781405513746

Another Part of the Wood

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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Another Part of the Wood

By: Beryl Bainbridge

Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling. Joseph decides to take his mistress and son, together with a few friends, to stay in a cabin in deepest Wales for the weekend - with absolutely disastrous results. Beryl Bainbridge's gift for deadpan dialogue and spare narrative, and her darkly comic vision of the world, are all in evidence in this early novel.

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Page Count

196

Publisher

Penguin UK

Published Date

ISBN 10

0141962496

ISBN 13

9780141962498

Front Row

Evenings at The Theatre

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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Front Row

Evenings at The Theatre

By: Beryl Bainbridge

With an outstanding introductory essay, one of the greatest living English novelists has assembled her writings, essays and reviews about the theatre to provide a highly individual view of contemporary theatre and actors.

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Page Count

231

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1441178449

ISBN 13

9781441178442

Harriet Said...

A Virago Modern Classic

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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Harriet Said...

A Virago Modern Classic

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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Page Count

122

Publisher

Virago

Published Date

ISBN 10

1405513748

ISBN 13

9781405513746

The Dolphin Connection

By: Beryl Bainbridge

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The Dolphin Connection

By: Beryl Bainbridge

First novel by a woman who was a co-founder of the Children's Arena Theatre and who has published musicals, poetry and short stories in the past. In this novel for older children and young adults, the story revolves around a sixteen year-old boy who has a special ability to communicate with dolphins and the intrigues and adventures which arise out of his talent.

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Page Count

156

Published Date

ISBN 10

0859249360

ISBN 13

9780859249362

Book's by Beryl Bainbridge

A Quiet Life

A Quiet Life

According to Queeney

According to Queeney

The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume One

The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume One

The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume One

The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume One

A Quiet Life

A Quiet Life

Master Georgie

Master Georgie

A Weekend With Claude

A Weekend With Claude

An Awfully Big Adventure

An Awfully Big Adventure

The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress

The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress

Harriet Said...

Harriet Said...

Another Part of the Wood

Another Part of the Wood

Front Row

Front Row

Harriet Said...

Harriet Said...

The Dolphin Connection

The Dolphin Connection

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