Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge (1977, republished 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media)

Dame Beryl Bainbridge is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific British novelists of her generation. Consistently praised by critics, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and twice won the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year.   She was born in Liverpool in 1932 and died in London in 2010.

Beryl Bainbridge On The Reading Life

Works Read to Date

Harriet Said

The Bottle Factory Outing

According to Queenie

Young Adolf

Sweet William 1976

An Awfully Big Adventure 1989

Injury Time

Injury Time is a witty, perceptive account of a middle aged married man's affair with a woman, Binny, who has three children.  Binny is tired of being the "woman on the side", only able to see Edward when he can squeeze in time away from his wife.  When Edward stops by her place, they have to wait until her ten year old goes to bed before they can have sex,leaving about fifteen minutes before Michael has to leave.  

Edward is a somewhat hapless chap, working in dull job and in a marriage with Helen which, if not loveless, is hardly passionate.  And he has a mistress – albeit one with three unruly children at home, and no intention of staying submissively in the shadows.  His mistress rejoices in the absurd name Binny. Binny is getting very sick of this.  Michael is always telling her how he wished he had more time for her.  Edwards mangeses an alibi for an evening and to try to calm down Binny,he invites a work friend and his wife over to Binny's place for dinner.  

The dinner party turns into a darkly hilarious disaster starting with Binny's a bit drunk friend and neighbor Anne intruding.  But then the real disaster occurs when three strangers,two men and a woman stage a random home invasion.  They have in mind holding the two couples as hostages against the police,seeking to arrest them.   The invaders tie them up.  Things get pretty weird.  I will leave the remaining plot untold.  

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Open Road  Intergrated  Media  is a dynamic high quality  publisher with over 10,000 books and 2000 authors on their well organized web pages. The prices are very fair and the formatting of their E Books is flawless.  

The Beryl Bainbridge books are only being offered for sale in the USA

 

Beryl Bainbridge A Biography Love By All Sorts of Means by Brendan King(2016)

Dame Beryl Bainbridge is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific British novelists of her generation. Consistently praised by critics, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and twice won the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year.   She was born in Liverpool in 1932 and died in London in 2010.

Beryl Bainbridge On The Reading Life

Works Read to Date

Harriet Said

The Bottle Factory Outing

According to Queenie

Young Adolf

Sweet William 1976

An Awfully Big Adventure 1989

Birthday Boys 1991

Brendan King was Beryl Bainbridge's secretary and literary assistant for the final  23 years of her life.   Additionally he had unprecedented access to her letters and was on close terms with many of her friends, lovers, and publishers.   

Bainbridge's life was chaotic, full of excesses, lots of lovers, financial ups and downs, a good bit of whiskey.  Not to long ago I decided to read all of Bainbridge's seventeen novels.  So far I have read eight.  King devotes a lof of space to showing how about half of her novels arose from her early years working in the theater, The Bottle  Factory, one of my favorite of her novels, was inspired. by her work in such a place, and her romances.  (She at one point complied a list of seventeen lovers). We learn she liked sex, in addition to the lovers, it appears there may have been some same sex relations also there were a good number of no name one time encounters.  About half of her novels were contemporary set in England.  King tells us that about half way through her literary career Bainbridge felt she had fully mined her personal life and began to write historical fiction.  

King lets us see the importance having a good and caring publisher became to Bainbridge.  Her publisher even gave her a make work job in their office.  King shows us she was not a great money manager.  Some of her novels sold well and movies were made from a few of her books.  

King devotes a lot of space to explaining how her life produced her books,  we learn about her very serious research methods for her novel about Robert Scott's expedition to the South Pole, Birthday Boys.  Kings takes us deeply into Bainbridge's time working in regional British theater. 

Brendan King has written an illuminating highly emphatic very detailed biography.  He had intimate knowledge of her life and I felt I knew her through King's account of her life.  

Bainbridge was a warm, wise, and witty writer, best shared with a generous shot of rye whiskey.

Beryl Bainbridge A Biography Love By All Sorts of Means by Brendan King is s not just a  very good biography, it is a first rate social history and a brilliant account of a woman's struggling to make a living through her writings.  Bainbridge had her demons and King kelps us understand them.  He takes us through her most important relationships, her trials as a mother and a wife.  Bainbridge was also a painter it was a great pleasure to learn of this.

I am very glad I read this book.  I recommend it to all lovers of literary biographers and of course to fans of Dams Bainbridge.

Mel u 

Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge (1991, reissued 2016 by Open Road Intergrated Media)

Dame Beryl Bainbridge is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific British novelists of her generation. Consistently praised by critics, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and twice won the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year.   She was born in Liverpool in 1932 and died in London in 2010.

Beryl Bainbridge On The Reading Life

Works Read to Date

Harriet Said

The Bottle Factory Outing

According to Queenie

Young Adolf

Sweet William 1976

An Awfully Big Adventure 1989

Birthday Boys 1991

Beryl Bainbridge is highly emphatic, able to move from the consciousness of teenage girls, to an imagined young Adolf Hitler on a holiday in England, to blue collar women working in a bottle factory to Samuel Johnson and the Thrales in late 18th century London.

About half of Bainbridge's seventeen novels draw on her own life experiences in the theater and her at times tumultuous personal life.  The rest are historical works carefully researched and very well imagined.  Back in Bainbridge's day research meant more than a quick Google search, you actually had to go to a library, get books and read them.  

Birthday Boys tells the story of Robert Scott's 1913 expedition to Antartica.   There are five narrators, each giving us a different look at the expedition.  There is Petty Officer Tiff Evans, the medical officer Doctor Edward Wilson, Lt. Harry Bower, the ships captain Lawrence Oliver and the leader Robert Scott.  The objective of the expedition is to be the first group of explorers to reach the South Pole.  Unfortunately, a Norwegian team beats them by a month. 

Each of the narrators has their own perspective on the trip.  One hopes his accumulated pay on return will be enough to set up pub in his home town, another worries about how the long trio, up to three years, will impact his marriage, the ship Captain has pecuniary concerns and of course Robert Scott dreams of glory for England and himself.

I thought the most enthralling parts of Birthday Boys was in the account of the triip across the ice.  Bainbridge does just a wonderful job describing the terrifying beauty of the landscape and the horrific hardships of the trip.  The men remain very British, very civilized as death seems to close upon them.

Birthday Boys is a very powerful work of empathy and imagination.

I am now reading her Injury Time. 

http://www.openroadmedia.com/

Open Road  Intergrated  Media  is a dynamic high quality  publisher with over 10,000 books and 2000 authors on their well organized web pages. The prices are very fair and the formatting of their E Books is flawless.  

The Beryl Bainbridge books are only being offered for sale in the USA

Mel u

An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge (1989, republished in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media)

Dame Beryl Bainbridge is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific British novelists of her generation. Consistently praised by critics, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and twice won the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year.   She was born in Liverpool in 1932 and died in London in 2010.

"The plaster saints were not real. Dickens was her real patron, and she was the only writer of our day who had a truly Dickensian gift. Like Dickens, she used all the buried ghosts of a presumably unhappy childhood to produce a gallery of literary comedy. She would sometimes stand in Bayham Street, Camden Town, and a look of real reverence came over her face as we recalled the child Dickens leaving from that address each morning on the long walk down to the boot-blacking factory in the Strand." - from her obituary in The Observor 2010 

Beryl Bainbridge On The Reading Life

Works Read to Date

Harriet Said

The Bottle Factory Outing

According to Queenie

Young Adolf

Sweet William 1976

An Awfully Big Adventure 1989

Beryl Bainbridge is highly emphatic, able to move from the consciousness of teenage girls, to an imagined young Adolf Hitler on a holiday in England, to blue collar women working in a bottle factory to Samuel Johnson and the Thrales in late 18th century London

An Awfully Big Adventure is set shortly after World War II, things are still rationed and life is a bit hard.  The men in the story all have war stories.  Most of the plot action resolves around the sexual dynamics  and backstage politics at a regional English playhouse putting on a production of Peter Pain.  The central character is teenage Sarah Bradshaw, from the poor side of Liverpool, living with her aunt and uncle, her parents having passed. Bainbridge has a keen insight into young girls without firm parental supervision, trying to find there way into the sdult world, especially into sex. 

I think the obituary writer for The Observor is quite right in saying Bainbridge has an almost Dickensian ability to mine her childhood experiences for literary material.  In the case of An Awfully Big Adventure, she drew on her experiences starting when she was sixteen as a helper in a Liverpool theater.  Rural theater was struggling to come back after the war and Bainbridge depicts this very subtly in the novel. 

Sarah develops an infatuation with an older male actor and is frustrated and confused when he shows no interest in her. The compsny is preparing to put on a production of Peter Pan and it is hard to miss the comment Bainbridge is making on men in the theater.  

An Awfully Big Adventure is witty, wicked, and wry.  I am very glad I have decided to read all the Bainbridge I can. 

http://www.openroadmedia.com/

Open Road  Intergrated  Media  is a dynamic high quality  publisher with over 10,000 books and 2000 authors on their well organized web pages. The prices are very fair and the formatting of their E Books is flawless.  

The Beryl Bainbridge books are only being offered for sale in the USA

Mel u

Sweet William by Beryl Bainbridge (1976, reissued 2016 by Open Road Media)

Dame Beryl Bainbridge is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific British novelists of her generation. Consistently praised by critics, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and twice won the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year.   She was born in Liverpool in 1932 and died in London in 2010.

Beryl Bainbridge On The Reading Life

Works Read to Date

Harriet Said

The Bottle Factory Outing

According to Queenie

Young Adolf

Sweet William 1976

Beryl Bainbridge is highly emphatic, able to move from the consciousness of teenage girls, to an imagined young Adolf Hitler on a holiday in England, to blue collar women working in a bottle factory to Samuel Johnson and the Thrales in late 18th century London. 

Sweet William is the story of a woman in her twenties, Ann living in Hampstead. She works for the BBC.  As the novel opens she is at the airport seeing off her fiancé Gerard who is leaving for a job in New York City.  The plan is Ann will join him soon.  Then she meets William,at church.  He invites her to coffee,tells her of his work as a playwright. He tells Ann he will soon be on a BBC program talking about his work.  When she tells William she has no TV, he says give me your address and i will send you a TV.  From this meeting an affair develops.  Her mother goes ballistic when she learns William is married.  

Ann has feelings of guilt for cheating on Gerard, but she begins to think he no longer intends to bring her to the USA.  She also knows it is wrong to steal the husband of another woman.  To make it all the more complicated she develops a relationship with the wife.  There are lots of interesting didbits of information we are tantalized with.  Her critical relatives  may have a less than pristine pasts.  

I love the exquisite prose of Bainbridge, there is so much in this conversation when Ann first tells her mother of William

"‘I don’t know, Mummy. He’s very rich. Oh Mummy, he’s married.’ ‘It’s every woman for herself,’ said Mrs Walton. ‘But his wife?’ Ann could see Edna in a come-dancing mood, gliding about her home, devoid of husband. ‘It’s all wrong, isn’t it?’ she asked, wanting confirmation. ‘What does his father do?’ ‘He’s a General, Mummy, in—’ But Mrs Walton was over the moon with delight. A General. How pleased Captain Walton would be. It was too late to mention the brass band playing in the gutter –the sea of love was rolling in. ‘I’ll come down and meet him,’ Mrs Walton threatened. ‘Just say the word.’ ‘Wait,’ said Ann. ‘Not yet. Wait.’ She cursed herself for having told her mother about William. From then on she lived in constant fear of that step on the stair, the veiled hat with the primroses stiffly waving, emerging from the taxi, the gloved hand extended to greet the General’s son."

There is a very good 1980 movie based on the novel.  I was able to watch the full movie on YouTube.  

http://www.openroadmedia.com/

Open Road  Media  is a dynamic high quality  publisher with over 10,000 books and 2000 authors on their well organized web pages. The prices are very fair and the formatting of their E Books is flawless.  

The Beryl Bainbridge books are only being offered for sale in the USA

     2001, Bainbridge made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth 

Mel uEdit

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Young Adolf by Beryl Bainbridge (1978, to be reissued by Open Road Media)

Dame Beryl Bainbridge is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific British novelists of her generation. Consistently praised by critics, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and twice won the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year.   She was born in Liverpool in 1932 and died in London in 2010.

Beryl Bainbridge On The Reading Life

Works Read to Date

Harriet Said

The Bottle Factory Outing

According to Queenie

Young Adolf

Berly Bainbridge is a tremendously imaginative and empathetic writer.  In the four novels inhale so far had the great pleasure of reading she had entered the scary mind set of young teenage girls, the blue collar world of female employees at a bottle factory, Samuel Johnson and the Thrales, and the experiences of a young Adolf Hitler on an imagined by Bainbridge working vacation in England.

Young Adolf takes us to a time after World War One and before Hitler began to be politically active.  When we meet him he is staying in England with his half brother and his sister in law.  No mention is ever made of what he will become.  His half brother gets Adolf a job as a helper and errand runner at a beautiful hotel.  At first young Adolf feels degraded to work for small tips but soon he begins to enjoy working in the hotel.  His sister in law resents him living there with them and not chipping in for expenses, I had a grim laugh when she said that Adopf " will never amount to anything".  More than anything else the novel is a portrayal of working class British life in the 1920s.  Adolf does express his political views but everyone just ignores him.  He complains about being rejected by an art school, about WW I and his parents.  

Young Adolf is a very creative work, presenting a very believable young Adolf in an excellently realized setting.

I enjoyed it a lot.

If you have a favorite novel by Bainbridge please let us know. 

http://www.openroadmedia.com/

Open Road  Media  is a dynamic high quality  publisher with over 10,000 books and 2000 authors on their well organized web pages. The prices are very fair and the formatting of their E Books is flawless.  

Mel u

According to Queeney (2001, to be reissued by Open Road Media)

Beryl Bainbridge was born in Liverpool in 1932 and died in Lindon in 2010.  She published 22 novels, three collections of short stories and four works of nonfiction.  Dame Beryl Bainbridge is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific British novelists of her generation. Consistently praised by critics, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and twice won the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year.

After finishing Harriet Said and then The Bottle Factory Outing i knew i wanted to read her twenty other novels but was not sure where to start.  Then upon looking at the extensive catalogue at Open Road Media I found she had written a novel centering on Samuel Johnson's relationship with the Thrale family.  Most people's vision of Johnson is derived from his biographer James Boswell.  Boswell left out a very important element of the life of Johnson, his fifteen year relationship (begun in 1861) with the Thrale family.  The novel covers incidents over the fifteen year period.  They were so close that Johnson had his own room at their house (Henry Thrale was a wealthy Brewry owner and a member of parliament). Johnson would go home to his house in London three or four days a week.   The Thrales regularly sent a carriage for him.  Johnson and the Thrales were very close. He and their very precocious daughter Queeny had a special relationship. 

According to Quieney is for people like me every into Samuel Jphnson as a person,not just as a writer.  In order to fully appreciate this novel you need to know about Samuel Johnson's household members in London, his relationship to his late wife, Bossell of course, Henry Thrales and his wife and you need to understand Johnson's very real quirks and his brilliance.  He was deeply into the reading life, he always took a lot of books with him when he went to visit the Thrales.

The Thrales entertained a lot and Dr. Johnson and his brilliant conversation were a draw.  We meet Oliver Goldsmith and the great painter Joshua Reynolds.  The Thrales have lots of children, Johnson's favorite is their daughter Queeny.  She is depicted as able to read the Latin poetry of Dryden and Pope at age six.

I really liked the depiction of life at Johnson's house in London, where he produced his great dictionary. (I have been there and this novel really brought things to life for me.). Johnson shared his house with his longtime black sevent Frank Barber, two doctors who could no longer practice and two housekeepers.    Bainbridge gets up close and personal with Johnson, depicting him in bed with his housekeeper Mrs Williams.  Johnson is depicted as having great feelings of guilt brought on by his strong sex drive. He was close friends with James Boswell, among others, who routinely frequented prostitutes but it seems once his wife died, as Bainbridge shows us when we listen in on one of Johnson's more agitated conversation, Johnson's sexual activity was limited to through the clothes fiddling about with Mrs Williams and some lap sitting with younger women. He does talk bluntly about masturbation. 

Anyone who knows the story of Johnson and the Thrales will be waiting for the tragic close of the relationship.  Johnson's reaction to Mrs Thrales remarriage to an Italian piano teacher employed by the family brings out the worst in Johnson.  Many think he was incensed to have lost his free meals,he was a big eater and his accommodations. Johnson and the Thrales were all cat lovers!

According to Queeney is structured in wonderful way.  Every episodic chapter is closed by a letter from the adult Queeney, she went on to marry an admiral.

I totally enjoyed According to Queeney. Maybe those not into the world of Samuel Johnson may be better of with one of her other books but if you do have an interest then this book will delight you.Bainbridge has a great feel for the people in the novel.  You will know right away if this book is for you and for the right readers,like me,it is a marvelous work.

I have begun reading her Young Adolf 

http://www.openroadmedia.com/

Open Road  Media  is a dynamic high quality  publisher with over 10,000 books and 2000 authors on their well organized web pages. The prices are very fair and the formatting of their E Books is flawless.  

Mel u

The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge (1974, being republished by Open Road Media)

Beryl Bainbridge was born in Liverpool in 1932 and died in Lindon in 2010.  She published 17! novels, three collections of short stories and four works of nonfiction.  She was short listed for The Booker Prize five times.  

A few days ago I read my first work by Beryl Bainbridge, the wonderful book about two teenage girls Harriet Said. Having just finished her The Bottle Factory Outing, I hope to read through her full works in the next few months.  

Bertha and Freda are two blue collar British ladies working in abottle factory in England.  The factory is owned by an Italian man.  Almost all of the other workers are from his home small town in Italy.  He started the factory with just a few men from the village and slowly more and more came.  Tome the best most enjoyable part of the novel was in the depictions of the interactions of the English women with their Italian immigrant coworkers.  (Bainbridge worked for a short time prior to writing this book in a bottle label factory.).  The women live together, both are currently single.  Freda  has a big crush on one of the factory workers.  The factory workers see home town Italian girls as the on.y wife they can imagine having. The men are themselves either single or working to be able to bring their wives and families  to England.  They are fascinated by the English ladies.  It was just so much fun,so marvelously done, to see their interactions.

The factory owner has become quite wealthy. He is looked on by all with great awe.  Brenda lets itbeknown their toilet at home needs repairing and one of the men vo,interesting to come over to fixit.  This turns out to be very interesting.

A out is planned for all the factory workers.  There is a lot of excitement building up.  The outing leads to a terrible disaster, just so horrible.  

The depiction of the characters,major and minor, are masterful.  

Bainbridge,her husband, and their children 

http://www.openroadmedia.com/

Open Road  Media  is a dynamic high quality  publisher with over 10,000 books and 2000 authors on their well organized web pages. The prices are very fair and the formatting of their E Books is flawless.  

Mel u

Harriet Said by Beryl Bainbridge (1972)

Beryl Bainbridge was born in Liverpool in 1932 and died in Lindon in 2010.  She published 17 novels, three collections of short stories and four works of nonfiction.  She was short listed for The Booker Prize five times.

Any day I discover a new to me writer to love is a good day.  Beryl Bainridge is considered by many to be among the best 20th century English novelists.  I am passed being embarrassed admitting I never heard of her until a week ago.  

According to my first research, Bainbridge published 22 novels, 3 collections of short stories and several works of nonfiction.  She was short listed for the Booker Prize five times.  Most of her novels have a reading time under four hours.

Harriet Said was completed in 1958.  Every publisher Bainbridge submitted the book to told her it was just too dark a story, focusing on two young teenage girls who are victims of child molestation.  Bainbridge forgot about publishing it and came to think the manuscript was lost.  One of the publishers she submitted the work to in 1958 decided 14 years later to publish the book, long after numerous of her books were successfully brought out.

The story is narrated by a 13 year old girl.  Her best friend is Harriet, a much more savvy about life and love 14 year old. To her what Harriet days is close gospel.  The conversations between the girls, their attitude toward their parents and their thoughts about men are just brilliantly done.  Based on my experiences with my three daughters, 18, 21, and 23 I was shocked by Bainbridge's insights.  I could not help but think there are things a father is better off not knowing.  

The narrator has a crush on an adult man they call the Tsar.  He is married.  It takes awhile to realize he is molesting the narrator.  They don't have sex, he just seems to "fiddle about" with her above her clothes.  Harriet has been naked with  a soldier but it is not clear what happened. It may be that Harriet  is just making up this experience to appear more worldly.  Harriet says she thinks he will be back  It was chilling to hear the girls say all this is just normal. 

       The First Paper Back Edition 

The patents are just wonderful creations.  

The ending is totally shocking.  

As of right now it looks like none of her novels are available as Kindle editions or even as hard copies.  Thankfully Open Road Media is in the process of bring all of her novels out as Kindle books.  

I have begun reading her Booker Short listed work, The Bottle Factory Outing, Bainbridge worked  for a while in a bottle factory.  I love it and I am close to deciding I want to read all her novels.  

I am currently also reading Berly Bainbridge Love by All Sorts of Means: A Biography by Brendan King, forthcoming next month from Bloomsbury U K. It is a fascinating book.  

Mel u

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