The Birthday Boys

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In this stunning new novel, award-winning author Beryl Bainbridge offers a brilliantly fictionalized account of the doomed Antarctic expedition led by Captain Scott in 1912. At once hair-raising and beautiful, here is an astonishing tale of misguided courage and human endurance. The Birthday Boys of the title are Scott and four members of his team, each of whom narrates a section of the book. As the story progresses the reader discovers that these men may not be reliable reporters. Their cocky optimism is both ...
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1995 Paperback Good *****PLEASE NOTE: This item is shipping from an authorized seller in Europe. In the event that a return is necessary, you will be able to return your item ... within the US. To learn more about our European sellers and policies see the BookQuest FAQ section***** Read more Show Less

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More About This Book

Overview

In this stunning new novel, award-winning author Beryl Bainbridge offers a brilliantly fictionalized account of the doomed Antarctic expedition led by Captain Scott in 1912. At once hair-raising and beautiful, here is an astonishing tale of misguided courage and human endurance. The Birthday Boys of the title are Scott and four members of his team, each of whom narrates a section of the book. As the story progresses the reader discovers that these men may not be reliable reporters. Their cocky optimism is both ghastly and dangerous. Brought up to despise professional expertise, their enterprise is lunatic, amateur and gentlemanly. Beryl Bainbridge makes it hauntingly clear: the men are fatally doomed in their bravery, the very stuff of heroes. Captain Scott's poignant trek becomes, in this remarkable novel, an historical event which prefigures the terrible new world dawning in Europe. It was an inept rehearsal for the carnage of the first world war, the ultimate challenge for the arrogant generals who shared Scott's skewed notion of courage that led men qualmlessly into harm's way. Subtle, poetic and unforgettable, The Birthday Boys is impossible to read without experiencing that magical shiver up the spine which is caused when great writing touches the soul.
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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Bainbridge, the idiosyncratic English author whose best-known books here are probably The Bottle Factory Outing and The Dressmaker , has never gained the American audience she deserves. The fact that this gripping, moving and hair-raisingly readable novel has taken three years to achieve publication here--and then only by a courageous and enterprising smaller publisher--suggests that Americans are still slightly wary of her. Readers should abandon such caution immediately, for this is by far her best book to date: a riveting account told in shifting first-person narratives by the key members of the doomed Antarctic expedition led by Captain Scott in 1912. It has been written about often before, and memorably filmed, but Bainbridge's cunningly fictionalized account leaves others standing. She takes on, in turn, the voices of burly, roistering Welsh Petty Officer Taff Evans; sweet-natured, scholarly, all-forgiving Dr. Edward (Uncle Bill) Wilson; Captain Robert Falcon Scott himself, a memorably complex man with a strong gift for command overlying deep inner fears and anxieties; Lieut. Henry (Birdie) Bowers, an endlessly energetic, curious, squat adventurer who has roved the world's perilous places alone; and aloof, sardonic, aristocratic Capt. Lawrence (Titus) Oates, a rich man beginning to realize his essential humanity in the months before his death. Every Englishman knows the agonizing end of their story, only hinted at in the book by a schoolgirl's map of their final death march back from the South Pole after being beaten there by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. 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. The beauty and horror of the desolate landscapes, the painful limits of human endurance and bravery, are unforgettably caught in prose that is as swift, cool and clear as ice melt. A masterly achievement, not to be missed by anyone who cherishes a strong, meaningful story beautifully told. (Apr.)
Library Journal
The story of Capt. Robert Scott's second expedition is narrated by Scott himself and the four men who perished along with him in the frigid weather and miserable conditions of Antarctica. Beginning with their June 1910 departure from Cardiff on the Terra Nova , and ending with the terrible journey by sled back to the ship in March 1912, the five men consecutively recount their journey through an emotional as well as physical landscape, from pride in the idea of taking part in the expedition, to excitement over the beauty of the terrain and the scientific discoveries they've made, to sick disappointment at learning that Amundsen had beaten them to the South Pole, and, finally, to despair over their certain deaths. Writing in economical, occasionally poetic prose, with fidelity to the historial accounts, Bainbridge has succeeded in re-creating the lives and deaths of a group of brave and doomed men. Recommended for general collections.-- Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle, Wash .
School Library Journal
A riveting fictionalized account of Robert Falcon Scott's doomed British expedition to the South Pole in 1910, related through the diary entries of five of its members. Bainbridge conveys a vivid sense of the era and of the pride, idealism, and bravado of the explorers as they prepare for their adventure. Once they reach Antarctica, their attention turns to the excitement and pleasure in the scenic and scientific discoveries that await them. But in the final analysis, it is their courage and fortitude that shine through in the face of failure (the Norwegian Amundsen beat them to the South Pole by a month) and the realization that they will not survive.-Pamela B. Rearden, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780786203109
  • Publisher: Macmillan Library Reference
  • Publication date: 1/31/1995
  • Edition description: LARGEPRINT
  • Pages: 251
  • Product dimensions: 5.46 (w) x 8.50 (h) x 0.55 (d)

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