Author of the Month: Beryl Bainbridge
Selected by the Bookshop
Born in Liverpool in 1932, Beryl Bainbridge was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, more than any other author, but surprisingly never won it. To make amends, the Booker Prize Foundation initiated shortly after her death a ‘Best of Beryl Prize’, which invited the public to choose their favourite from her five shortlisted titles. The winner was Master Georgie, an account of a surgeon-photographer and his retinue during the Crimean War, described by the Sunday Telegraph as ‘truly extraordinary, heartbreakingly good.’
Her 17 novels, all darkly comic, travel between pre- and post-war Liverpool, Georgian London, the blood-stained shores of the Bosporus and the frozen wilderness of Antarctica, and together make up one of the most rewarding bodies of work in 20th-century British fiction.
From the publisher:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 1998SHORTLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FICTION PRIZEWINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT MEMORIAL PRIZE FOR FICTIONWINNER OF THE WH SMITH BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDWhen Master Georgie – George Hardy, surgeon and…
From the publisher:
'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 TimesSHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE IN 1990It is 1950 and the Liverpool repertory theatre…
From the publisher:
WINNER OF THE WHITBREAD PRIZE FOR FICTION 1996WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH WRITERS’ PRIZE 1997‘A narrative both sparkling and deep . . . the cost of raising [the Titanic] is prohibitive; Bainbridge does the next best thing’…
From the publisher:
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…
From the publisher:
‘The book I wish I’d written . . . Witty, chilling, every word in place’ Hilary Mantel, GuardianWartime Liverpool is a place of ration books and jobs in munitions factories. Rita, living with her two aunts Nellie and…
From the publisher:
'A stellar literary event . . . written with panache and an enviable economy . . . the biggest risk of her literary life' Margaret AtwoodAccording to Queeney is a masterly evocation of the last years of Dr Johnson, arguably Britain's…
From the publisher:
‘An extremely original and disconcerting story’ – Daily TelegraphA girl returns from boarding school to her sleepy Merseyside hometown and waits to be reunited with her childhood friend, Harriet, chief architect of…
From the publisher:
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…
From the publisher:
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…
From the publisher:
Edward is throwing a dinner party with Binny , his mistress. Aware that she has long been denied those small intimacies that his wife takes for granted – choosing a birthday present for his sister, for example, or sorting his socks…
From the publisher:
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…
From the publisher:
Dame Beryl Bainbridge was one of the most popular and recognisable English novelists of her generation. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, and her critically acclaimed novels The Dressmaker (1973), The Bottle Factory…
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