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 

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Mel u