Lynn Freed
. . .Bainbridge uses a repertory theater company in Liverpool in the 1950's as the stage for her heroine's grimy coming of age. . . .While the strength of this novel lies in its realism, its clever prose, its faithfully drawn scenery, its memorable vignettes, there is, in the end, something too intended in the story, something missing from the book. What it lacks, perhaps, is reverberation. -- The New York Times
From the Publisher
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
