Engaging but ultimately unconvincing, 22 Oct 2008
There are some parts of this book that you cannot help but enjoy: the lack of glamour in the running of a provincial theatre where the cast complain about "the digs" and are forever tripping over carelessly discarded brooms and suchlike back stage. Bainbridge tries to do something more than just satirise the egos of minor celebs, however, she wants her main character, Stella, to go on a journey of discovery and this is where the book monumentally fails. Some revewiers have compared the denoument to "The Sixth Sense"; unfortunately it is nowhere near as good. By the end we already know that Stella is psychologically unbalanced by the way she quickly falls for Meredith (though we never learn precisely why) and the wayshe allows herself to be used and abused by multiple men throughout the book. Given the subject matter and characters Bainbridge could have done a lot more with this than she does. The writing is imaginative and I personally enjoyed the occassional flourishes of flowery prose usually employed when describing something quite mundane, but ultimately the plot could have been better.

Over-written and often unpleasant, 14 Jul 2006
Bainbridge is an impressive writer, but so far from having a spare prose style, she has a tendency to over-write, for example: 'when the taxi, girdled by pigeons, swooshed from the curb'. The plot is intricate and the characterisation effective, but the book frequently contains disturbing incidents which are not necessary to the main theme, for instance: 'a boy carrying a sheet of glass under his arm came down the stairs. He was wearing outsize boots without laces. He tripped on the bottom step and, losing one boot, lunged forwards, cartwheeling across the pavement on that deadly crutch of glass. ...He lay perfectly still, brows arched in surprise, bare toes quivering as the blood drained out of him.'
This passage vividly illustrates Bainbridge's skill as a writer, but you may not wish to about such an incident. Overall the book might best be described as a tragi-comedy. There are some funny moments, but the ending is doubly sad.

Like a very fine well made bottle of champagne, 22 Feb 2005
She writes beautifully and sparingly. You are straight into the story no messing about. The book is full of humour, skillfully drawn characters that you grasp within a few sentences but the narrative is always going somewhere. The clues are always there. The trick is not to get carried away and read it too fast. It ought to be savoured.

Awfully Good, 13 Nov 2003
Beryl Bainbridge is such a perfectionist that, according to a recent article in Mslexia, she is still trying to formulate the title of her present work in progress. Such consummate professionalism is clearly present in this mind-blowingly good novel.

Set in 1950, An Awfully Big Adventure chronicles the life of troubled Stella Bradshaw, an aspiring young actress making her first hesitant steps onto the professional stage. She rapidly becomes infatuated with Meridith, the company director, and, when he spurns her advances, she turns to O’Hara (stand-in for Hook in their production of Peter Pan), in an effort to make him jealous. This attempt badly misfires, however, as the quite brilliant ending proves (every bit as shocking in its way as that of Sixth Sense) and we are left to reflect on the perils of unrequited love, dark, powerful family secrets, and the crippling effect of war.

That Bainbridge achieves such multilayered depth in such a slim novel is nothing short of remarkable. An Awfully Big Adventure is beautifully crafted, tightly plotted – with absolutely no loose ends. She brings it to its awful denouement with devastating logic. And it is very subtly done: Bainbridge emphatically shows and studiously avoids telling. We are meant to infer her message from the drama of the narrative. She, as with other great novelists, allows the reader time and space to think – hence the exquisitely spare prose. I shall have to stop now, for fear of writing page after page of compliments. Suffice it to say, therefore, that An Awfully Big Adventure is wonderful in every way – character development, style and plot execution are all flawless. Truly, this is the perfect novel.

In According to Queeney, a bold, often ribald and moving invention, Beryl Bainbridge takes the extravagant figure of Samuel Johnson, 18th-century scholar and wit, and brings his last 20 years to rumbustious life through the blunt and mocking observations of his mistress's firstborn daughter Queeney.

Hurtling her readers into small and great events in the company of Garrick and Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney and Boswell, the years spin by. Johnson's wearisomely quarrelling household in Johnson's Court draws him increasingly to the sublime excesses of Streatham Court, presided over by his adored Mrs Thrale (whose wifely duties include poultices to testicles). This odd ménage is gossiped about and gawked at as child births and deaths, comeuppances and flirtations, swallowed buttons and skirmishes on staircases reveal as well as obscure unpalatable shifts of affection to the ageing Johnson and the composed but outraged Queeney.

Bainbridge's handling of the troubled, demanding and contrite Johnson and of Queeney, first as child observer and then as reluctant adult correspondent, are especially vivid, quirky and captivating. And this creation of sheer delight is underlayed by a delicate attention to the vulnerabilities of the human heart. --Ruth Petrie

Engaging but ultimately unconvincing, 22 Oct 2008
There are some parts of this book that you cannot help but enjoy: the lack of glamour in the running of a provincial theatre where the cast complain about "the digs" and are forever tripping over carelessly discarded brooms and suchlike back stage. Bainbridge tries to do something more than just satirise the egos of minor celebs, however, she wants her main character, Stella, to go on a journey of discovery and this is where the book monumentally fails. Some revewiers have compared the denoument to "The Sixth Sense"; unfortunately it is nowhere near as good. By the end we already know that Stella is psychologically unbalanced by the way she quickly falls for Meredith (though we never learn precisely why) and the wayshe allows herself to be used and abused by multiple men throughout the book. Given the subject matter and characters Bainbridge could have done a lot more with this than she does. The writing is imaginative and I personally enjoyed the occassional flourishes of flowery prose usually employed when describing something quite mundane, but ultimately the plot could have been better.

Over-written and often unpleasant, 14 Jul 2006
Bainbridge is an impressive writer, but so far from having a spare prose style, she has a tendency to over-write, for example: 'when the taxi, girdled by pigeons, swooshed from the curb'. The plot is intricate and the characterisation effective, but the book frequently contains disturbing incidents which are not necessary to the main theme, for instance: 'a boy carrying a sheet of glass under his arm came down the stairs. He was wearing outsize boots without laces. He tripped on the bottom step and, losing one boot, lunged forwards, cartwheeling across the pavement on that deadly crutch of glass. ...He lay perfectly still, brows arched in surprise, bare toes quivering as the blood drained out of him.'
This passage vividly illustrates Bainbridge's skill as a writer, but you may not wish to about such an incident. Overall the book might best be described as a tragi-comedy. There are some funny moments, but the ending is doubly sad.

Like a very fine well made bottle of champagne, 22 Feb 2005
She writes beautifully and sparingly. You are straight into the story no messing about. The book is full of humour, skillfully drawn characters that you grasp within a few sentences but the narrative is always going somewhere. The clues are always there. The trick is not to get carried away and read it too fast. It ought to be savoured.

Awfully Good, 13 Nov 2003
Beryl Bainbridge is such a perfectionist that, according to a recent article in Mslexia, she is still trying to formulate the title of her present work in progress. Such consummate professionalism is clearly present in this mind-blowingly good novel.

Set in 1950, An Awfully Big Adventure chronicles the life of troubled Stella Bradshaw, an aspiring young actress making her first hesitant steps onto the professional stage. She rapidly becomes infatuated with Meridith, the company director, and, when he spurns her advances, she turns to O’Hara (stand-in for Hook in their production of Peter Pan), in an effort to make him jealous. This attempt badly misfires, however, as the quite brilliant ending proves (every bit as shocking in its way as that of Sixth Sense) and we are left to reflect on the perils of unrequited love, dark, powerful family secrets, and the crippling effect of war.

That Bainbridge achieves such multilayered depth in such a slim novel is nothing short of remarkable. An Awfully Big Adventure is beautifully crafted, tightly plotted – with absolutely no loose ends. She brings it to its awful denouement with devastating logic. And it is very subtly done: Bainbridge emphatically shows and studiously avoids telling. We are meant to infer her message from the drama of the narrative. She, as with other great novelists, allows the reader time and space to think – hence the exquisitely spare prose. I shall have to stop now, for fear of writing page after page of compliments. Suffice it to say, therefore, that An Awfully Big Adventure is wonderful in every way – character development, style and plot execution are all flawless. Truly, this is the perfect novel.

Some interesting passages but ultimately disappointing, 26 Sep 2006
From the description on the back cover and extracts of reviews inside, I had high hopes of this book as a work of fiction based on real people and events from the late 18th century. In the event I found it rather dull. Characters appear without any attempt to explain who they were. Some of these are well known historical figures but in other cases it took most of the book to find out vaguely what their relevance was to Johnson's life. This would be fine for a reader who is an expert on Johnson, but for someone without that knowledge it was tiresome. A more serious criticism is that the book is a series of vignettes based on the last 20 years of Johnson's life and as such lacks a compelling story. I finished the book feeling that I had gained a little insight into the social history of the way Johnson and his friends lived, but not much else.

Well researched, 04 Jan 2003
Bainbridge has researched her subject well - I came away feeling that I had learned something about the characters of a number of famous names - James Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney, etc. However, the tale itself felt disjointed at times with the technique of switching between centuries (Each chapter is interspersed with a letter from the older Queeney, looking back on her family acquaintance). Johnson himself seemed an improbably unattractive character in temperament for a much courted lady to be chasing. In fact, most of the characters have very few endearing features.

It was a pleasing enough book, but not as enjoyable as I thought it could have been.

Booker Committee, 19 Nov 2002
This is novel number 16 for Ms. Beryl Bainbridge. In addition to these she has written an additional 4 works. Of the first 15 novels, 5 have been nominated for the prestigious Booker Award, however it has never been granted to her work. If there is another writer who has had one third of their work nominated but not rewarded, I have not come across one. Many other awards have found their way to this tremendous storyteller; I hope the Booker Folks catch up.

"According To Queeney", demonstrates once again the ease with which Ms. Beryl Bainbridge can reach, both back into history and to some of the great players of their times, and not only grasp, but create wonderful new tales. The century of choice this time is the 18th, and she chooses the formidable Samuel Johnson as her focus. This person alone would be plenty for most writers, however she has added actor David Garrick, poet Oliver Goldsmith, novelist Fanny Burney, and artist Joshua Reynolds. Each of these people could fill their own book, and more than one has. The brilliance of this work is that the author manages to bring them all together, give them all they're due, and does so in a fairly brief 216 pages. She does not merely name drop or make a passing reference. She manages to make all of the various players memorable; however brief their words allotted may appear to be. The truth is they read with much greater length.

A young counterpoint to Johnson is the Queeney of the title. An extremely precocious child, she is a favorite of Johnson's as well as a talented young mind he seeks to cultivate. This same Queeney becomes a correspondent for a researcher investigating her memories of her young years, as they relate to her and her mother, the latter of the two who Johnson becomes emotionally attached to. The mother eventually becomes available for marriage, and the events surrounding this opportunity bring the threads of the story together, and then to a close.

This is one of the best books that Ms. Bainbridge has written. I hope the people who nominate and then award The Booker Prize, once again nominate this work, which then will cause them to make a decision that differs from those in the past. If they do not, when her next work is released, she will then be the 6 times nominated author for the award.

Simply excellent, 08 Jan 2002
Berl Bainbridge's lastest novel manages to completely involve you in the lives of her complex characters and give a vivid picture of Georgian times whilst also supplying a very enetertaining read. I particularly enjoyed the way that the book's focus switches from one character to another, thus disturbing the reliability of the narrative and enhancing the reader's appreciation of the foibles and eccentricities of each one's point of view.

Baffling but enjoyable, 07 Jan 2002
This was an enjoyable, well-written but ultimately baffling book. It seems like it might have been an experiment to see whether it's possible to write about Johnson in a 'Johnsonian' way i.e. digressive, moody and episodic; if so, it works pretty well. If not, then I'm a bit stumped.
Like a number of Bainbridge's other excursions into historical fiction, like Master Georgie or the Birthday Boys, one is left wondering why the author chose the particular times and characters she's writing about; she doesn't seem particularly close to them; nor do they act as universals, so oddly do they behave. Still, she's a great writer of sentences. Some of them still go on ringing through my head weeks after reading them.

Beryl Bainbridge seems drawn to disaster. First she tackled the Unfortunate Scott expedition to the South Pole in The Birthday Boys; later (but emphatically pre-DiCaprio) came the sinking of the Titanic, in Every Man for Himself. Now, in her third historical novel (and her 16th overall), she takes on the Crimean War, and the result is a slim, gripping volume with all of the doomed intensity of the Light Brigade's charge--but, thankfully, without the Tennysonian bombast. "Some pictures," a character confides, "would only cause alarm to ordinary folk." There's a warning concealed here, and one that easily disturbed readers would do well to heed: Master Georgie is intense, disturbing, revelatory--and not always pretty to look at.

Bainbridge's narrative circles around the enigmatic figure of George Hardy, a surgeon, amateur photographer, alcoholic and repressed homosexual who counters the dissipation of his prosperous Liverpool life by heading for the Crimean Peninsula in 1854. His journey and subsequent tour of duty are told in three very different voices: Myrtle, an orphan whose lifelong loyalty to her "Master Georgie" becomes an overriding obsession; Pompey Jones, street urchin, fire-eater, photographer and George's sometime lover; and Dr. Potter, George's scholarly brother-in-law, whose retreat from the war's carnage and into books takes on a tinge of madness.

United by a sudden death in a Liverpool brothel in 1846, these characters plumb the curious workings of love, war, class and fate. In between, Bainbridge frames an unforgettable series of tableaux morts: a dying soldier, one lens of his glasses "fractured into a spider's web"; a decapitated leg, toes "poking through the shreds of a cavalry boot"; two dead men "on their knees, facing one another, propped up by the pat-a-cake thrust of their hands." Glimpsed as if sideways and then passed over in language that is as understated as it is lovely, these are images that sear into the brain. Master Georgie is full of such moments, horrors painted with an exquisite brush. --Mary Park

Engaging but ultimately unconvincing, 22 Oct 2008
There are some parts of this book that you cannot help but enjoy: the lack of glamour in the running of a provincial theatre where the cast complain about "the digs" and are forever tripping over carelessly discarded brooms and suchlike back stage. Bainbridge tries to do something more than just satirise the egos of minor celebs, however, she wants her main character, Stella, to go on a journey of discovery and this is where the book monumentally fails. Some revewiers have compared the denoument to "The Sixth Sense"; unfortunately it is nowhere near as good. By the end we already know that Stella is psychologically unbalanced by the way she quickly falls for Meredith (though we never learn precisely why) and the wayshe allows herself to be used and abused by multiple men throughout the book. Given the subject matter and characters Bainbridge could have done a lot more with this than she does. The writing is imaginative and I personally enjoyed the occassional flourishes of flowery prose usually employed when describing something quite mundane, but ultimately the plot could have been better.

Over-written and often unpleasant, 14 Jul 2006
Bainbridge is an impressive writer, but so far from having a spare prose style, she has a tendency to over-write, for example: 'when the taxi, girdled by pigeons, swooshed from the curb'. The plot is intricate and the characterisation effective, but the book frequently contains disturbing incidents which are not necessary to the main theme, for instance: 'a boy carrying a sheet of glass under his arm came down the stairs. He was wearing outsize boots without laces. He tripped on the bottom step and, losing one boot, lunged forwards, cartwheeling across the pavement on that deadly crutch of glass. ...He lay perfectly still, brows arched in surprise, bare toes quivering as the blood drained out of him.'
This passage vividly illustrates Bainbridge's skill as a writer, but you may not wish to about such an incident. Overall the book might best be described as a tragi-comedy. There are some funny moments, but the ending is doubly sad.

Like a very fine well made bottle of champagne, 22 Feb 2005
She writes beautifully and sparingly. You are straight into the story no messing about. The book is full of humour, skillfully drawn characters that you grasp within a few sentences but the narrative is always going somewhere. The clues are always there. The trick is not to get carried away and read it too fast. It ought to be savoured.

Awfully Good, 13 Nov 2003
Beryl Bainbridge is such a perfectionist that, according to a recent article in Mslexia, she is still trying to formulate the title of her present work in progress. Such consummate professionalism is clearly present in this mind-blowingly good novel.

Set in 1950, An Awfully Big Adventure chronicles the life of troubled Stella Bradshaw, an aspiring young actress making her first hesitant steps onto the professional stage. She rapidly becomes infatuated with Meridith, the company director, and, when he spurns her advances, she turns to O’Hara (stand-in for Hook in their production of Peter Pan), in an effort to make him jealous. This attempt badly misfires, however, as the quite brilliant ending proves (every bit as shocking in its way as that of Sixth Sense) and we are left to reflect on the perils of unrequited love, dark, powerful family secrets, and the crippling effect of war.

That Bainbridge achieves such multilayered depth in such a slim novel is nothing short of remarkable. An Awfully Big Adventure is beautifully crafted, tightly plotted – with absolutely no loose ends. She brings it to its awful denouement with devastating logic. And it is very subtly done: Bainbridge emphatically shows and studiously avoids telling. We are meant to infer her message from the drama of the narrative. She, as with other great novelists, allows the reader time and space to think – hence the exquisitely spare prose. I shall have to stop now, for fear of writing page after page of compliments. Suffice it to say, therefore, that An Awfully Big Adventure is wonderful in every way – character development, style and plot execution are all flawless. Truly, this is the perfect novel.

Some interesting passages but ultimately disappointing, 26 Sep 2006
From the description on the back cover and extracts of reviews inside, I had high hopes of this book as a work of fiction based on real people and events from the late 18th century. In the event I found it rather dull. Characters appear without any attempt to explain who they were. Some of these are well known historical figures but in other cases it took most of the book to find out vaguely what their relevance was to Johnson's life. This would be fine for a reader who is an expert on Johnson, but for someone without that knowledge it was tiresome. A more serious criticism is that the book is a series of vignettes based on the last 20 years of Johnson's life and as such lacks a compelling story. I finished the book feeling that I had gained a little insight into the social history of the way Johnson and his friends lived, but not much else.

Well researched, 04 Jan 2003
Bainbridge has researched her subject well - I came away feeling that I had learned something about the characters of a number of famous names - James Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney, etc. However, the tale itself felt disjointed at times with the technique of switching between centuries (Each chapter is interspersed with a letter from the older Queeney, looking back on her family acquaintance). Johnson himself seemed an improbably unattractive character in temperament for a much courted lady to be chasing. In fact, most of the characters have very few endearing features.

It was a pleasing enough book, but not as enjoyable as I thought it could have been.

Booker Committee, 19 Nov 2002
This is novel number 16 for Ms. Beryl Bainbridge. In addition to these she has written an additional 4 works. Of the first 15 novels, 5 have been nominated for the prestigious Booker Award, however it has never been granted to her work. If there is another writer who has had one third of their work nominated but not rewarded, I have not come across one. Many other awards have found their way to this tremendous storyteller; I hope the Booker Folks catch up.

"According To Queeney", demonstrates once again the ease with which Ms. Beryl Bainbridge can reach, both back into history and to some of the great players of their times, and not only grasp, but create wonderful new tales. The century of choice this time is the 18th, and she chooses the formidable Samuel Johnson as her focus. This person alone would be plenty for most writers, however she has added actor David Garrick, poet Oliver Goldsmith, novelist Fanny Burney, and artist Joshua Reynolds. Each of these people could fill their own book, and more than one has. The brilliance of this work is that the author manages to bring them all together, give them all they're due, and does so in a fairly brief 216 pages. She does not merely name drop or make a passing reference. She manages to make all of the various players memorable; however brief their words allotted may appear to be. The truth is they read with much greater length.

A young counterpoint to Johnson is the Queeney of the title. An extremely precocious child, she is a favorite of Johnson's as well as a talented young mind he seeks to cultivate. This same Queeney becomes a correspondent for a researcher investigating her memories of her young years, as they relate to her and her mother, the latter of the two who Johnson becomes emotionally attached to. The mother eventually becomes available for marriage, and the events surrounding this opportunity bring the threads of the story together, and then to a close.

This is one of the best books that Ms. Bainbridge has written. I hope the people who nominate and then award The Booker Prize, once again nominate this work, which then will cause them to make a decision that differs from those in the past. If they do not, when her next work is released, she will then be the 6 times nominated author for the award.

Simply excellent, 08 Jan 2002
Berl Bainbridge's lastest novel manages to completely involve you in the lives of her complex characters and give a vivid picture of Georgian times whilst also supplying a very enetertaining read. I particularly enjoyed the way that the book's focus switches from one character to another, thus disturbing the reliability of the narrative and enhancing the reader's appreciation of the foibles and eccentricities of each one's point of view.

Baffling but enjoyable, 07 Jan 2002
This was an enjoyable, well-written but ultimately baffling book. It seems like it might have been an experiment to see whether it's possible to write about Johnson in a 'Johnsonian' way i.e. digressive, moody and episodic; if so, it works pretty well. If not, then I'm a bit stumped.
Like a number of Bainbridge's other excursions into historical fiction, like Master Georgie or the Birthday Boys, one is left wondering why the author chose the particular times and characters she's writing about; she doesn't seem particularly close to them; nor do they act as universals, so oddly do they behave. Still, she's a great writer of sentences. Some of them still go on ringing through my head weeks after reading them.

LIFE SEEN THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, 01 Sep 2008
It's difficult to know quite where to begin here, in the face of such overwhelming praise from so many satisfied readers. And yet over 600 being offered for sale from one penny perhaps speaks more eloquently of the book's appeal. It's not that it's badly written, just that it fails to illuminate Master Georgie's life. That after all should be its purpose, particularly where, as here, that person existed and at least one of the events described took place. The author is content to conjure up others to act as prisms, which would be a useful literary device if they illuminated the central figure, but instead we see him through a glass darkly. I may be in a minority of one, but it failed to live up to my expectations.

Complex, moving, beautifully cratfed, 04 Feb 2008
At first glance Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge suggests it might be quite a light book, an easy read, a period piece set in the mid-nineteenth century. This would be wrong. Master Georgie is no safe tale of country house manners, of marriages imagined by confined, embroidering young women. Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie is anything but a tale of such saccharine gentility.

Master Georgie is a surgeon and photographer, and the book is cast in six plates - photographic plates, not chapters. Death figures throughout. From start to finish morbidity crashes into the lives of the book's characters. We begin with Mr Moody, dead in a brothel bed, his host of minutes before in shock. Later we move to the Crimean War, where the carnage is graphic, extensive and apparently random. And even then individuals find their own personal ways of adding insult and injury to the suffering.

The book uses multiple points of view. We see things Master Georgie's way. Myrtle, an orphan he takes in, adds her perspective. The fussy geologist, Dr Potter, imprints his own version of reality. And still there are less than explained undercurrents, undeclared motives which affect them all. Thus, overall, Master Georgie is a complex and ambitious novel. Though it is set in a major war, the backdrop is never allowed to dominate. The characters experience the consequences of conflict and register their reactions, but we are never led by the nose trough the history or the geography of the setting.

But we also never really get to know these people. Myrtle, perhaps, has the strongest presence. She has a slightly jaundiced, certainly pragmatic approach to life. But even she finds the privations of wartime tough. Why the characters of Master Georgie are all so keen to offer themselves as support for the war effort is an aspect of the book that never fully revealed itself. And ultimately this was my criticism of Beryl Bainbridge's book. While the overall experience was both rewarding and not a little shocking, I found there was insufficient delineation between the characters and their differing motives. The beauty of the prose, however, more than made up for any shortcoming. The language created the mixed world of mid-nineteenth century politeness and juxtaposed this with the visceral vulgarities of soldiering and the general struggle of life. This rendered Master Georgie a complex, moving and quite beautiful book.


A great achievement, 08 Oct 2007
George Hardy, surgeon and photographer, sets of from Victorian England to do his patriotic duty in the Crimea. His tale his told by the people following him there: his (adoptive) sister Myrtle, the geologist Dr. Potter, and Hardy's photography-assistant Pompey Jones.

They all leave with their heads filled with newspaper-stories of gallant soldiers and heroes, and none of them is prepared for the harsh and cruel reality of warfare. The filth and misery of warfare will change them beyond recognition, and Bainbridge tells their story in haunting scenes.

Without a doubt one of the best novels I've read in a long time.

Sensitive, moving story about love and loss, 03 Feb 2003
The idea of writing this novel about a character, George Hardy, but confining its “voice” to the three people most close to him gives George, the person, an almost mystical air and at the same time is a very good device to reveal snippets of his life as the story progresses.
The three narrators are, predictably, very different and the events they describe often clash amusingly. Myrtle is the most reverential to George and it is through her voice we perceive the sensitivity of Bainbridge’s story- she is also the most sympathetic. Dr Potter provides the humour (at his own expense) that lightens an otherwise bleak situation. Finally, Pompey Jones is similar to Myrtle in his devotion but almost her rival in love- he also provides the first hand account of the battle scenes at the end of the book which are unfortunately the least interesting or polished part of the book.
Bainbridge infuses the book with ambiguities of sexuality that sit beside the harshness of the war very well. What is interesting is the amount of gore and unpleasantness that permeates the supposedly “prim” Victorian values of the characters.
By far superior to Every Man For Himself and deserves its Booker Prize nomination. The length of MG was a disappointment; however, at only just over two hundred pages long I felt it didn’t develop its characters as well as it could- especially having three different narrators. Also the conflict near the end didn’t have the dramatic tension or interest I thought it should. A fine novel but much too short.

pictures of love and war, 05 Sep 2001
i'm no great reader but found this book a 'special' one in the author's gift of depicting human ties to each other. The younger characters portrayed in the book for me seem the strongest and most interesting, though Master Georgie's character is unravelled well by the end of the book. While describing the horror of war in the book, the humaness of the characters give a colour to the story in the dark of war. Even though all the characters have their flaws there seems to be a heroism with the central characters that is beyond their facing of war. Beryl to me seems a master of sketching characters in this book.

After taking on the ill-fated Scott expedition to the South Pole in her previous book, The Birthday Boys, the novelist tackles a much larger 1912 disaster: the sinking of the Titanic. The narrator, a 22-year-old named Morgan, brushes up against real-life victims such as John James Astor early in the voyage, while falling in love with the beautiful and unobtainable Wallis Ellery. The deadly maiden voyage of the world's largest ocean liner becomes a journey of self-discovery in this portentous, postmodern work, short-listed for the 1996 Booker Prize.

Engaging but ultimately unconvincing, 22 Oct 2008
There are some parts of this book that you cannot help but enjoy: the lack of glamour in the running of a provincial theatre where the cast complain about "the digs" and are forever tripping over carelessly discarded brooms and suchlike back stage. Bainbridge tries to do something more than just satirise the egos of minor celebs, however, she wants her main character, Stella, to go on a journey of discovery and this is where the book monumentally fails. Some revewiers have compared the denoument to "The Sixth Sense"; unfortunately it is nowhere near as good. By the end we already know that Stella is psychologically unbalanced by the way she quickly falls for Meredith (though we never learn precisely why) and the wayshe allows herself to be used and abused by multiple men throughout the book. Given the subject matter and characters Bainbridge could have done a lot more with this than she does. The writing is imaginative and I personally enjoyed the occassional flourishes of flowery prose usually employed when describing something quite mundane, but ultimately the plot could have been better.

Over-written and often unpleasant, 14 Jul 2006
Bainbridge is an impressive writer, but so far from having a spare prose style, she has a tendency to over-write, for example: 'when the taxi, girdled by pigeons, swooshed from the curb'. The plot is intricate and the characterisation effective, but the book frequently contains disturbing incidents which are not necessary to the main theme, for instance: 'a boy carrying a sheet of glass under his arm came down the stairs. He was wearing outsize boots without laces. He tripped on the bottom step and, losing one boot, lunged forwards, cartwheeling across the pavement on that deadly crutch of glass. ...He lay perfectly still, brows arched in surprise, bare toes quivering as the blood drained out of him.'
This passage vividly illustrates Bainbridge's skill as a writer, but you may not wish to about such an incident. Overall the book might best be described as a tragi-comedy. There are some funny moments, but the ending is doubly sad.

Like a very fine well made bottle of champagne, 22 Feb 2005
She writes beautifully and sparingly. You are straight into the story no messing about. The book is full of humour, skillfully drawn characters that you grasp within a few sentences but the narrative is always going somewhere. The clues are always there. The trick is not to get carried away and read it too fast. It ought to be savoured.

Awfully Good, 13 Nov 2003
Beryl Bainbridge is such a perfectionist that, according to a recent article in Mslexia, she is still trying to formulate the title of her present work in progress. Such consummate professionalism is clearly present in this mind-blowingly good novel.

Set in 1950, An Awfully Big Adventure chronicles the life of troubled Stella Bradshaw, an aspiring young actress making her first hesitant steps onto the professional stage. She rapidly becomes infatuated with Meridith, the company director, and, when he spurns her advances, she turns to O’Hara (stand-in for Hook in their production of Peter Pan), in an effort to make him jealous. This attempt badly misfires, however, as the quite brilliant ending proves (every bit as shocking in its way as that of Sixth Sense) and we are left to reflect on the perils of unrequited love, dark, powerful family secrets, and the crippling effect of war.

That Bainbridge achieves such multilayered depth in such a slim novel is nothing short of remarkable. An Awfully Big Adventure is beautifully crafted, tightly plotted – with absolutely no loose ends. She brings it to its awful denouement with devastating logic. And it is very subtly done: Bainbridge emphatically shows and studiously avoids telling. We are meant to infer her message from the drama of the narrative. She, as with other great novelists, allows the reader time and space to think – hence the exquisitely spare prose. I shall have to stop now, for fear of writing page after page of compliments. Suffice it to say, therefore, that An Awfully Big Adventure is wonderful in every way – character development, style and plot execution are all flawless. Truly, this is the perfect novel.

Some interesting passages but ultimately disappointing, 26 Sep 2006
From the description on the back cover and extracts of reviews inside, I had high hopes of this book as a work of fiction based on real people and events from the late 18th century. In the event I found it rather dull. Characters appear without any attempt to explain who they were. Some of these are well known historical figures but in other cases it took most of the book to find out vaguely what their relevance was to Johnson's life. This would be fine for a reader who is an expert on Johnson, but for someone without that knowledge it was tiresome. A more serious criticism is that the book is a series of vignettes based on the last 20 years of Johnson's life and as such lacks a compelling story. I finished the book feeling that I had gained a little insight into the social history of the way Johnson and his friends lived, but not much else.

Well researched, 04 Jan 2003
Bainbridge has researched her subject well - I came away feeling that I had learned something about the characters of a number of famous names - James Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney, etc. However, the tale itself felt disjointed at times with the technique of switching between centuries (Each chapter is interspersed with a letter from the older Queeney, looking back on her family acquaintance). Johnson himself seemed an improbably unattractive character in temperament for a much courted lady to be chasing. In fact, most of the characters have very few endearing features.

It was a pleasing enough book, but not as enjoyable as I thought it could have been.

Booker Committee, 19 Nov 2002
This is novel number 16 for Ms. Beryl Bainbridge. In addition to these she has written an additional 4 works. Of the first 15 novels, 5 have been nominated for the prestigious Booker Award, however it has never been granted to her work. If there is another writer who has had one third of their work nominated but not rewarded, I have not come across one. Many other awards have found their way to this tremendous storyteller; I hope the Booker Folks catch up.

"According To Queeney", demonstrates once again the ease with which Ms. Beryl Bainbridge can reach, both back into history and to some of the great players of their times, and not only grasp, but create wonderful new tales. The century of choice this time is the 18th, and she chooses the formidable Samuel Johnson as her focus. This person alone would be plenty for most writers, however she has added actor David Garrick, poet Oliver Goldsmith, novelist Fanny Burney, and artist Joshua Reynolds. Each of these people could fill their own book, and more than one has. The brilliance of this work is that the author manages to bring them all together, give them all they're due, and does so in a fairly brief 216 pages. She does not merely name drop or make a passing reference. She manages to make all of the various players memorable; however brief their words allotted may appear to be. The truth is they read with much greater length.

A young counterpoint to Johnson is the Queeney of the title. An extremely precocious child, she is a favorite of Johnson's as well as a talented young mind he seeks to cultivate. This same Queeney becomes a correspondent for a researcher investigating her memories of her young years, as they relate to her and her mother, the latter of the two who Johnson becomes emotionally attached to. The mother eventually becomes available for marriage, and the events surrounding this opportunity bring the threads of the story together, and then to a close.

This is one of the best books that Ms. Bainbridge has written. I hope the people who nominate and then award The Booker Prize, once again nominate this work, which then will cause them to make a decision that differs from those in the past. If they do not, when her next work is released, she will then be the 6 times nominated author for the award.

Simply excellent, 08 Jan 2002
Berl Bainbridge's lastest novel manages to completely involve you in the lives of her complex characters and give a vivid picture of Georgian times whilst also supplying a very enetertaining read. I particularly enjoyed the way that the book's focus switches from one character to another, thus disturbing the reliability of the narrative and enhancing the reader's appreciation of the foibles and eccentricities of each one's point of view.

Baffling but enjoyable, 07 Jan 2002
This was an enjoyable, well-written but ultimately baffling book. It seems like it might have been an experiment to see whether it's possible to write about Johnson in a 'Johnsonian' way i.e. digressive, moody and episodic; if so, it works pretty well. If not, then I'm a bit stumped.
Like a number of Bainbridge's other excursions into historical fiction, like Master Georgie or the Birthday Boys, one is left wondering why the author chose the particular times and characters she's writing about; she doesn't seem particularly close to them; nor do they act as universals, so oddly do they behave. Still, she's a great writer of sentences. Some of them still go on ringing through my head weeks after reading them.

LIFE SEEN THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, 01 Sep 2008
It's difficult to know quite where to begin here, in the face of such overwhelming praise from so many satisfied readers. And yet over 600 being offered for sale from one penny perhaps speaks more eloquently of the book's appeal. It's not that it's badly written, just that it fails to illuminate Master Georgie's life. That after all should be its purpose, particularly where, as here, that person existed and at least one of the events described took place. The author is content to conjure up others to act as prisms, which would be a useful literary device if they illuminated the central figure, but instead we see him through a glass darkly. I may be in a minority of one, but it failed to live up to my expectations.

Complex, moving, beautifully cratfed, 04 Feb 2008
At first glance Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge suggests it might be quite a light book, an easy read, a period piece set in the mid-nineteenth century. This would be wrong. Master Georgie is no safe tale of country house manners, of marriages imagined by confined, embroidering young women. Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie is anything but a tale of such saccharine gentility.

Master Georgie is a surgeon and photographer, and the book is cast in six plates - photographic plates, not chapters. Death figures throughout. From start to finish morbidity crashes into the lives of the book's characters. We begin with Mr Moody, dead in a brothel bed, his host of minutes before in shock. Later we move to the Crimean War, where the carnage is graphic, extensive and apparently random. And even then individuals find their own personal ways of adding insult and injury to the suffering.

The book uses multiple points of view. We see things Master Georgie's way. Myrtle, an orphan he takes in, adds her perspective. The fussy geologist, Dr Potter, imprints his own version of reality. And still there are less than explained undercurrents, undeclared motives which affect them all. Thus, overall, Master Georgie is a complex and ambitious novel. Though it is set in a major war, the backdrop is never allowed to dominate. The characters experience the consequences of conflict and register their reactions, but we are never led by the nose trough the history or the geography of the setting.

But we also never really get to know these people. Myrtle, perhaps, has the strongest presence. She has a slightly jaundiced, certainly pragmatic approach to life. But even she finds the privations of wartime tough. Why the characters of Master Georgie are all so keen to offer themselves as support for the war effort is an aspect of the book that never fully revealed itself. And ultimately this was my criticism of Beryl Bainbridge's book. While the overall experience was both rewarding and not a little shocking, I found there was insufficient delineation between the characters and their differing motives. The beauty of the prose, however, more than made up for any shortcoming. The language created the mixed world of mid-nineteenth century politeness and juxtaposed this with the visceral vulgarities of soldiering and the general struggle of life. This rendered Master Georgie a complex, moving and quite beautiful book.


A great achievement, 08 Oct 2007
George Hardy, surgeon and photographer, sets of from Victorian England to do his patriotic duty in the Crimea. His tale his told by the people following him there: his (adoptive) sister Myrtle, the geologist Dr. Potter, and Hardy's photography-assistant Pompey Jones.

They all leave with their heads filled with newspaper-stories of gallant soldiers and heroes, and none of them is prepared for the harsh and cruel reality of warfare. The filth and misery of warfare will change them beyond recognition, and Bainbridge tells their story in haunting scenes.

Without a doubt one of the best novels I've read in a long time.

Sensitive, moving story about love and loss, 03 Feb 2003
The idea of writing this novel about a character, George Hardy, but confining its “voice” to the three people most close to him gives George, the person, an almost mystical air and at the same time is a very good device to reveal snippets of his life as the story progresses.
The three narrators are, predictably, very different and the events they describe often clash amusingly. Myrtle is the most reverential to George and it is through her voice we perceive the sensitivity of Bainbridge’s story- she is also the most sympathetic. Dr Potter provides the humour (at his own expense) that lightens an otherwise bleak situation. Finally, Pompey Jones is similar to Myrtle in his devotion but almost her rival in love- he also provides the first hand account of the battle scenes at the end of the book which are unfortunately the least interesting or polished part of the book.
Bainbridge infuses the book with ambiguities of sexuality that sit beside the harshness of the war very well. What is interesting is the amount of gore and unpleasantness that permeates the supposedly “prim” Victorian values of the characters.
By far superior to Every Man For Himself and deserves its Booker Prize nomination. The length of MG was a disappointment; however, at only just over two hundred pages long I felt it didn’t develop its characters as well as it could- especially having three different narrators. Also the conflict near the end didn’t have the dramatic tension or interest I thought it should. A fine novel but much too short.

pictures of love and war, 05 Sep 2001
i'm no great reader but found this book a 'special' one in the author's gift of depicting human ties to each other. The younger characters portrayed in the book for me seem the strongest and most interesting, though Master Georgie's character is unravelled well by the end of the book. While describing the horror of war in the book, the humaness of the characters give a colour to the story in the dark of war. Even though all the characters have their flaws there seems to be a heroism with the central characters that is beyond their facing of war. Beryl to me seems a master of sketching characters in this book.

A first class tale of icy disaster, 11 Apr 2008
This novel is a masterpiece, and infinitely more rewarding than the film 'Titanic' with which it shares its subject matter. The fateful voyage is seen through the eyes of Morgan, a rich, young man related to the owner of the shipping line. Concentrating mainly on the first class passengers, to which set Morgan belongs, it paints a portrait of an insular group with an impressive array of vices. The title of the novel says it all - "Every man for himself" - and there is plenty of selfishness, silliness and snobbery on display here. However Morgan himself is basically a decent young chap, and does his best to look out for his friends as the disaster unfolds its course; ultimately he manages to save himself too. This is not a long novel, nor does it need to be, as every word has its place.

magnificent, 25 Feb 2008
A book I buy and give to my friends and await their response. The writing is simply fab. I felt complelled to underline bits and keep them forever. It's no adventure story about the titanic... it's a mirror / satire / vignette of style, culture and time.
Loved it.

How did it win Whitbread!?!?, 06 Jan 2008
Every Man for Himself won the 1996 Whitbread award for best novel, which is second only to the Booker prize in terms of literary accolades. So when embarking on it I was expecting something rather special. As it turned out I was rather disappointed.

At 214 pages long it is of a suitable length but the majority of this (170 pages) concerns the slightly mundane lives of a small group of upper class passengers during the first few days of the Titanic's journey. There is no main plot-line, and sub-plots are superficial and short-lived. Once you have realized this it can make the reading rather sluggish as it is not heading in any particular direction. Character development is universally poor, even for the main character who acts as narrator, although it is interesting to hear an account of some of the real-life characters on the Titanic albeit fictional. Little detail is given in describing the various rooms and decks throughout which the story is set.

One of the redeeming features of this book is the humour, which curiously is not mentioned either in the blurb or in any revives on the back cover. Despite this it is frequently present and entirely intentional. It has similarities with Grossmith's `Diary of a Nobody' and even a hint of Bertie Wooster, although obviously much darker than these.

The last forty pages save this novel from ignominy as they concern the sinking of the vessel. This part is written very well and is probably the reason for the award. It is not as action-packed as one might expect, but is poignant probably more realistic than many recent accounts.

Every Man for Himself should be read for the last chapter and, as it is reasonably short, is worth suffering the mundane majority. Some people may enjoy the whole book as an account of upper class life of the period, but I do not see the attraction. One to get from the library.

Scathing indictment of the class system, 01 Oct 2007
Wonderful book, but don't go expecting a novel about the Titanic. Yes, of course the Titanic features, but it's there as a plot device to expose the attitudes and insecurities of the upper class on board. Just as the iceberg rips through the underside of the ship, so it also rips though the underbelly of society, and for the main character at least the sinking literally washes away the chains of his past. It's all here - repressed sex, unrepressed sex, class divides, the insecurities of the privileged who have never had to work for anything. A satisfying streak of black humour runs through it all too. It's not perfect - the characters of Melchett and Van Hopper for example are pretty interchangeable (maybe that's the point?), but the plot rattles along nicely, without any wasted passages.

Brilliant as always, 16 Mar 2006
Since you know what's going to happen to the Titanic it seems like madness to write a novel with this sort of backdrop. But Bainbridge is such a clever accomplished writer that she turns this inevitability very distinctly to her advantage. The story is magnetically dragged to it's conclusion by the ships date with destiny and along the way Bainbridge stimulates with writing that is perfection and characters that intrigue.

The pithy insights, the black humour and the spare but accurate descriptions fill her 'tardis' like writing. Bainbridge manages to convey in one sentence what it takes other writers several pages to achieve.

Engaging but ultimately unconvincing, 22 Oct 2008
There are some parts of this book that you cannot help but enjoy: the lack of glamour in the running of a provincial theatre where the cast complain about "the digs" and are forever tripping over carelessly discarded brooms and suchlike back stage. Bainbridge tries to do something more than just satirise the egos of minor celebs, however, she wants her main character, Stella, to go on a journey of discovery and this is where the book monumentally fails. Some revewiers have compared the denoument to "The Sixth Sense"; unfortunately it is nowhere near as good. By the end we already know that Stella is psychologically unbalanced by the way she quickly falls for Meredith (though we never learn precisely why) and the wayshe allows herself to be used and abused by multiple men throughout the book. Given the subject matter and characters Bainbridge could have done a lot more with this than she does. The writing is imaginative and I personally enjoyed the occassional flourishes of flowery prose usually employed when describing something quite mundane, but ultimately the plot could have been better.

Over-written and often unpleasant, 14 Jul 2006
Bainbridge is an impressive writer, but so far from having a spare prose style, she has a tendency to over-write, for example: 'when the taxi, girdled by pigeons, swooshed from the curb'. The plot is intricate and the characterisation effective, but the book frequently contains disturbing incidents which are not necessary to the main theme, for instance: 'a boy carrying a sheet of glass under his arm came down the stairs. He was wearing outsize boots without laces. He tripped on the bottom step and, losing one boot, lunged forwards, cartwheeling across the pavement on that deadly crutch of glass. ...He lay perfectly still, brows arched in surprise, bare toes quivering as the blood drained out of him.'
This passage vividly illustrates Bainbridge's skill as a writer, but you may not wish to about such an incident. Overall the book might best be described as a tragi-comedy. There are some funny moments, but the ending is doubly sad.

Like a very fine well made bottle of champagne, 22 Feb 2005
She writes beautifully and sparingly. You are straight into the story no messing about. The book is full of humour, skillfully drawn characters that you grasp within a few sentences but the narrative is always going somewhere. The clues are always there. The trick is not to get carried away and read it too fast. It ought to be savoured.

Awfully Good, 13 Nov 2003
Beryl Bainbridge is such a perfectionist that, according to a recent article in Mslexia, she is still trying to formulate the title of her present work in progress. Such consummate professionalism is clearly present in this mind-blowingly good novel.

Set in 1950, An Awfully Big Adventure chronicles the life of troubled Stella Bradshaw, an aspiring young actress making her first hesitant steps onto the professional stage. She rapidly becomes infatuated with Meridith, the company director, and, when he spurns her advances, she turns to O’Hara (stand-in for Hook in their production of Peter Pan), in an effort to make him jealous. This attempt badly misfires, however, as the quite brilliant ending proves (every bit as shocking in its way as that of Sixth Sense) and we are left to reflect on the perils of unrequited love, dark, powerful family secrets, and the crippling effect of war.

That Bainbridge achieves such multilayered depth in such a slim novel is nothing short of remarkable. An Awfully Big Adventure is beautifully crafted, tightly plotted – with absolutely no loose ends. She brings it to its awful denouement with devastating logic. And it is very subtly done: Bainbridge emphatically shows and studiously avoids telling. We are meant to infer her message from the drama of the narrative. She, as with other great novelists, allows the reader time and space to think – hence the exquisitely spare prose. I shall have to stop now, for fear of writing page after page of compliments. Suffice it to say, therefore, that An Awfully Big Adventure is wonderful in every way – character development, style and plot execution are all flawless. Truly, this is the perfect novel.

Some interesting passages but ultimately disappointing, 26 Sep 2006
From the description on the back cover and extracts of reviews inside, I had high hopes of this book as a work of fiction based on real people and events from the late 18th century. In the event I found it rather dull. Characters appear without any attempt to explain who they were. Some of these are well known historical figures but in other cases it took most of the book to find out vaguely what their relevance was to Johnson's life. This would be fine for a reader who is an expert on Johnson, but for someone without that knowledge it was tiresome. A more serious criticism is that the book is a series of vignettes based on the last 20 years of Johnson's life and as such lacks a compelling story. I finished the book feeling that I had gained a little insight into the social history of the way Johnson and his friends lived, but not much else.

Well researched, 04 Jan 2003
Bainbridge has researched her subject well - I came away feeling that I had learned something about the characters of a number of famous names - James Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney, etc. However, the tale itself felt disjointed at times with the technique of switching between centuries (Each chapter is interspersed with a letter from the older Queeney, looking back on her family acquaintance). Johnson himself seemed an improbably unattractive character in temperament for a much courted lady to be chasing. In fact, most of the characters have very few endearing features.

It was a pleasing enough book, but not as enjoyable as I thought it could have been.

Booker Committee, 19 Nov 2002
This is novel number 16 for Ms. Beryl Bainbridge. In addition to these she has written an additional 4 works. Of the first 15 novels, 5 have been nominated for the prestigious Booker Award, however it has never been granted to her work. If there is another writer who has had one third of their work nominated but not rewarded, I have not come across one. Many other awards have found their way to this tremendous storyteller; I hope the Booker Folks catch up.

"According To Queeney", demonstrates once again the ease with which Ms. Beryl Bainbridge can reach, both back into history and to some of the great players of their times, and not only grasp, but create wonderful new tales. The century of choice this time is the 18th, and she chooses the formidable Samuel Johnson as her focus. This person alone would be plenty for most writers, however she has added actor David Garrick, poet Oliver Goldsmith, novelist Fanny Burney, and artist Joshua Reynolds. Each of these people could fill their own book, and more than one has. The brilliance of this work is that the author manages to bring them all together, give them all they're due, and does so in a fairly brief 216 pages. She does not merely name drop or make a passing reference. She manages to make all of the various players memorable; however brief their words allotted may appear to be. The truth is they read with much greater length.

A young counterpoint to Johnson is the Queeney of the title. An extremely precocious child, she is a favorite of Johnson's as well as a talented young mind he seeks to cultivate. This same Queeney becomes a correspondent for a researcher investigating her memories of her young years, as they relate to her and her mother, the latter of the two who Johnson becomes emotionally attached to. The mother eventually becomes available for marriage, and the events surrounding this opportunity bring the threads of the story together, and then to a close.

This is one of the best books that Ms. Bainbridge has written. I hope the people who nominate and then award The Booker Prize, once again nominate this work, which then will cause them to make a decision that differs from those in the past. If they do not, when her next work is released, she will then be the 6 times nominated author for the award.

Simply excellent, 08 Jan 2002
Berl Bainbridge's lastest novel manages to completely involve you in the lives of her complex characters and give a vivid picture of Georgian times whilst also supplying a very enetertaining read. I particularly enjoyed the way that the book's focus switches from one character to another, thus disturbing the reliability of the narrative and enhancing the reader's appreciation of the foibles and eccentricities of each one's point of view.

Baffling but enjoyable, 07 Jan 2002
This was an enjoyable, well-written but ultimately baffling book. It seems like it might have been an experiment to see whether it's possible to write about Johnson in a 'Johnsonian' way i.e. digressive, moody and episodic; if so, it works pretty well. If not, then I'm a bit stumped.
Like a number of Bainbridge's other excursions into historical fiction, like Master Georgie or the Birthday Boys, one is left wondering why the author chose the particular times and characters she's writing about; she doesn't seem particularly close to them; nor do they act as universals, so oddly do they behave. Still, she's a great writer of sentences. Some of them still go on ringing through my head weeks after reading them.

LIFE SEEN THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, 01 Sep 2008
It's difficult to know quite where to begin here, in the face of such overwhelming praise from so many satisfied readers. And yet over 600 being offered for sale from one penny perhaps speaks more eloquently of the book's appeal. It's not that it's badly written, just that it fails to illuminate Master Georgie's life. That after all should be its purpose, particularly where, as here, that person existed and at least one of the events described took place. The author is content to conjure up others to act as prisms, which would be a useful literary device if they illuminated the central figure, but instead we see him through a glass darkly. I may be in a minority of one, but it failed to live up to my expectations.

Complex, moving, beautifully cratfed, 04 Feb 2008
At first glance Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge suggests it might be quite a light book, an easy read, a period piece set in the mid-nineteenth century. This would be wrong. Master Georgie is no safe tale of country house manners, of marriages imagined by confined, embroidering young women. Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie is anything but a tale of such saccharine gentility.

Master Georgie is a surgeon and photographer, and the book is cast in six plates - photographic plates, not chapters. Death figures throughout. From start to finish morbidity crashes into the lives of the book's characters. We begin with Mr Moody, dead in a brothel bed, his host of minutes before in shock. Later we move to the Crimean War, where the carnage is graphic, extensive and apparently random. And even then individuals find their own personal ways of adding insult and injury to the suffering.

The book uses multiple points of view. We see things Master Georgie's way. Myrtle, an orphan he takes in, adds her perspective. The fussy geologist, Dr Potter, imprints his own version of reality. And still there are less than explained undercurrents, undeclared motives which affect them all. Thus, overall, Master Georgie is a complex and ambitious novel. Though it is set in a major war, the backdrop is never allowed to dominate. The characters experience the consequences of conflict and register their reactions, but we are never led by the nose trough the history or the geography of the setting.

But we also never really get to know these people. Myrtle, perhaps, has the strongest presence. She has a slightly jaundiced, certainly pragmatic approach to life. But even she finds the privations of wartime tough. Why the characters of Master Georgie are all so keen to offer themselves as support for the war effort is an aspect of the book that never fully revealed itself. And ultimately this was my criticism of Beryl Bainbridge's book. While the overall experience was both rewarding and not a little shocking, I found there was insufficient delineation between the characters and their differing motives. The beauty of the prose, however, more than made up for any shortcoming. The language created the mixed world of mid-nineteenth century politeness and juxtaposed this with the visceral vulgarities of soldiering and the general struggle of life. This rendered Master Georgie a complex, moving and quite beautiful book.


A great achievement, 08 Oct 2007
George Hardy, surgeon and photographer, sets of from Victorian England to do his patriotic duty in the Crimea. His tale his told by the people following him there: his (adoptive) sister Myrtle, the geologist Dr. Potter, and Hardy's photography-assistant Pompey Jones.

They all leave with their heads filled with newspaper-stories of gallant soldiers and heroes, and none of them is prepared for the harsh and cruel reality of warfare. The filth and misery of warfare will change them beyond recognition, and Bainbridge tells their story in haunting scenes.

Without a doubt one of the best novels I've read in a long time.

Sensitive, moving story about love and loss, 03 Feb 2003
The idea of writing this novel about a character, George Hardy, but confining its “voice” to the three people most close to him gives George, the person, an almost mystical air and at the same time is a very good device to reveal snippets of his life as the story progresses.
The three narrators are, predictably, very different and the events they describe often clash amusingly. Myrtle is the most reverential to George and it is through her voice we perceive the sensitivity of Bainbridge’s story- she is also the most sympathetic. Dr Potter provides the humour (at his own expense) that lightens an otherwise bleak situation. Finally, Pompey Jones is similar to Myrtle in his devotion but almost her rival in love- he also provides the first hand account of the battle scenes at the end of the book which are unfortunately the least interesting or polished part of the book.
Bainbridge infuses the book with ambiguities of sexuality that sit beside the harshness of the war very well. What is interesting is the amount of gore and unpleasantness that permeates the supposedly “prim” Victorian values of the characters.
By far superior to Every Man For Himself and deserves its Booker Prize nomination. The length of MG was a disappointment; however, at only just over two hundred pages long I felt it didn’t develop its characters as well as it could- especially having three different narrators. Also the conflict near the end didn’t have the dramatic tension or interest I thought it should. A fine novel but much too short.

pictures of love and war, 05 Sep 2001
i'm no great reader but found this book a 'special' one in the author's gift of depicting human ties to each other. The younger characters portrayed in the book for me seem the strongest and most interesting, though Master Georgie's character is unravelled well by the end of the book. While describing the horror of war in the book, the humaness of the characters give a colour to the story in the dark of war. Even though all the characters have their flaws there seems to be a heroism with the central characters that is beyond their facing of war. Beryl to me seems a master of sketching characters in this book.

A first class tale of icy disaster, 11 Apr 2008
This novel is a masterpiece, and infinitely more rewarding than the film 'Titanic' with which it shares its subject matter. The fateful voyage is seen through the eyes of Morgan, a rich, young man related to the owner of the shipping line. Concentrating mainly on the first class passengers, to which set Morgan belongs, it paints a portrait of an insular group with an impressive array of vices. The title of the novel says it all - "Every man for himself" - and there is plenty of selfishness, silliness and snobbery on display here. However Morgan himself is basically a decent young chap, and does his best to look out for his friends as the disaster unfolds its course; ultimately he manages to save himself too. This is not a long novel, nor does it need to be, as every word has its place.

magnificent, 25 Feb 2008
A book I buy and give to my friends and await their response. The writing is simply fab. I felt complelled to underline bits and keep them forever. It's no adventure story about the titanic... it's a mirror / satire / vignette of style, culture and time.
Loved it.

How did it win Whitbread!?!?, 06 Jan 2008
Every Man for Himself won the 1996 Whitbread award for best novel, which is second only to the Booker prize in terms of literary accolades. So when embarking on it I was expecting something rather special. As it turned out I was rather disappointed.

At 214 pages long it is of a suitable length but the majority of this (170 pages) concerns the slightly mundane lives of a small group of upper class passengers during the first few days of the Titanic's journey. There is no main plot-line, and sub-plots are superficial and short-lived. Once you have realized this it can make the reading rather sluggish as it is not heading in any particular direction. Character development is universally poor, even for the main character who acts as narrator, although it is interesting to hear an account of some of the real-life characters on the Titanic albeit fictional. Little detail is given in describing the various rooms and decks throughout which the story is set.

One of the redeeming features of this book is the humour, which curiously is not mentioned either in the blurb or in any revives on the back cover. Despite this it is frequently present and entirely intentional. It has similarities with Grossmith's `Diary of a Nobody' and even a hint of Bertie Wooster, although obviously much darker than these.

The last forty pages save this novel from ignominy as they concern the sinking of the vessel. This part is written very well and is probably the reason for the award. It is not as action-packed as one might expect, but is poignant probably more realistic than many recent accounts.

Every Man for Himself should be read for the last chapter and, as it is reasonably short, is worth suffering the mundane majority. Some people may enjoy the whole book as an account of upper class life of the period, but I do not see the attraction. One to get from the library.

Scathing indictment of the class system, 01 Oct 2007
Wonderful book, but don't go expecting a novel about the Titanic. Yes, of course the Titanic features, but it's there as a plot device to expose the attitudes and insecurities of the upper class on board. Just as the iceberg rips through the underside of the ship, so it also rips though the underbelly of society, and for the main character at least the sinking literally washes away the chains of his past. It's all here - repressed sex, unrepressed sex, class divides, the insecurities of the privileged who have never had to work for anything. A satisfying streak of black humour runs through it all too. It's not perfect - the characters of Melchett and Van Hopper for example are pretty interchangeable (maybe that's the point?), but the plot rattles along nicely, without any wasted passages.

Brilliant as always, 16 Mar 2006
Since you know what's going to happen to the Titanic it seems like madness to write a novel with this sort of backdrop. But Bainbridge is such a clever accomplished writer that she turns this inevitability very distinctly to her advantage. The story is magnetically dragged to it's conclusion by the ships date with destiny and along the way Bainbridge stimulates with writing that is perfection and characters that intrigue.

The pithy insights, the black humour and the spare but accurate descriptions fill her 'tardis' like writing. Bainbridge manages to convey in one sentence what it takes other writers several pages to achieve.

A FRIGHTFUL LOAD OF OLD TOSH, 30 Aug 2008
I began reading this with high hopes, based on the extracts of reviews on the back cover which proclaimed "razor sharp", "very funny" and "marvellously deft", but my expectations were soon dashed. The scenario is promising and in the right hands could have been hilarious, but that is not how it pans out. There is virtually no background, and the characters are inadequately described for us to work up much enthusiasm about what happens to them. In fact the author's approach is quite undisciplined, as if it's too much trouble to set the thing down properly. There is no sense of tension or narrative thread, the plot (for want of a better expression) meanders about and loses itself, and turning the page becomes a chore. It was a blessed relief when the mass of loose ends finally overcame their creator, whose joy at producing the inconsequential end could not have surpassed my own at reaching it.

Just as a footnote, the book seems to lack careful editing and proof-reading. On page 5 the hero (sic) remembers his wife singing "The sun has put his hat on", which makes you wonder what parallel universe he (or rather the author) inhabits. On page 42 "Nina advised againt", on page 74 "He said deferntially...." and on page 152 "...strutting up and down in plimsols..." But maybe the people at Abacus couldn't be bothered either.

a comic masterpiece, 17 Jan 2001
Beryl Bainbridge takes a caste of her characteristic grotesque-mundane characters to Soviet Russia with all their compulsions, banalities and neurotic tics, bag and baggage, transporting them to a world of bureaucracy and incomprehensible muddle in which the unaccountable is the normal. Bainbridge plays the full gamut of her comic tricks with her displaced persons, especially the helpless Ashburner who doesn't know why he's there, what he's doing, where his mistress or his luggage are and why his only possession is his fishing rod, which he took along to convince his wife (who couldn't give a bean anyway) that he was going for a piscatory holiday in Scotland. Style is superb, full of comic deflations and bathos, sharp arabesques, swoops and dives of pitch, in which the 'little people' engrossed in their own obsessive concerns negotiate terra incognita. Told with a knowing terse naivete typical of earlier Bainbridge. The central symbol of the Winter Garden refers to the bare patch of earth in Ashburner's back garden, never reached by sun, and icy Mother Russia. Displacement is a metaphor for all Bainbridge's people, who move through a demonic dream in which both anxiety and comic tension build, crazily lurching to a predestined conclusion.

Engaging but ultimately unconvincing, 22 Oct 2008
There are some parts of this book that you cannot help but enjoy: the lack of glamour in the running of a provincial theatre where the cast complain about "the digs" and are forever tripping over carelessly discarded brooms and suchlike back stage. Bainbridge tries to do something more than just satirise the egos of minor celebs, however, she wants her main character, Stella, to go on a journey of discovery and this is where the book monumentally fails. Some revewiers have compared the denoument to "The Sixth Sense"; unfortunately it is nowhere near as good. By the end we already know that Stella is psychologically unbalanced by the way she quickly falls for Meredith (though we never learn precisely why) and the wayshe allows herself to be used and abused by multiple men throughout the book. Given the subject matter and characters Bainbridge could have done a lot more with this than she does. The writing is imaginative and I personally enjoyed the occassional flourishes of flowery prose usually employed when describing something quite mundane, but ultimately the plot could have been better.

Over-written and often unpleasant, 14 Jul 2006
Bainbridge is an impressive writer, but so far from having a spare prose style, she has a tendency to over-write, for example: 'when the taxi, girdled by pigeons, swooshed from the curb'. The plot is intricate and the characterisation effective, but the book frequently contains disturbing incidents which are not necessary to the main theme, for instance: 'a boy carrying a sheet of glass under his arm came down the stairs. He was wearing outsize boots without laces. He tripped on the bottom step and, losing one boot, lunged forwards, cartwheeling across the pavement on that deadly crutch of glass. ...He lay perfectly still, brows arched in surprise, bare toes quivering as the blood drained out of him.'
This passage vividly illustrates Bainbridge's skill as a writer, but you may not wish to about such an incident. Overall the book might best be described as a tragi-comedy. There are some funny moments, but the ending is doubly sad.

Like a very fine well made bottle of champagne, 22 Feb 2005
She writes beautifully and sparingly. You are straight into the story no messing about. The book is full of humour, skillfully drawn characters that you grasp within a few sentences but the narrative is always going somewhere. The clues are always there. The trick is not to get carried away and read it too fast. It ought to be savoured.

Awfully Good, 13 Nov 2003
Beryl Bainbridge is such a perfectionist that, according to a recent article in Mslexia, she is still trying to formulate the title of her present work in progress. Such consummate professionalism is clearly present in this mind-blowingly good novel.

Set in 1950, An Awfully Big Adventure chronicles the life of troubled Stella Bradshaw, an aspiring young actress making her first hesitant steps onto the professional stage. She rapidly becomes infatuated with Meridith, the company director, and, when he spurns her advances, she turns to O’Hara (stand-in for Hook in their production of Peter Pan), in an effort to make him jealous. This attempt badly misfires, however, as the quite brilliant ending proves (every bit as shocking in its way as that of Sixth Sense) and we are left to reflect on the perils of unrequited love, dark, powerful family secrets, and the crippling effect of war.

That Bainbridge achieves such multilayered depth in such a slim novel is nothing short of remarkable. An Awfully Big Adventure is beautifully crafted, tightly plotted – with absolutely no loose ends. She brings it to its awful denouement with devastating logic. And it is very subtly done: Bainbridge emphatically shows and studiously avoids telling. We are meant to infer her message from the drama of the narrative. She, as with other great novelists, allows the reader time and space to think – hence the exquisitely spare prose. I shall have to stop now, for fear of writing page after page of compliments. Suffice it to say, therefore, that An Awfully Big Adventure is wonderful in every way – character development, style and plot execution are all flawless. Truly, this is the perfect novel.

Some interesting passages but ultimately disappointing, 26 Sep 2006
From the description on the back cover and extracts of reviews inside, I had high hopes of this book as a work of fiction based on real people and events from the late 18th century. In the event I found it rather dull. Characters appear without any attempt to explain who they were. Some of these are well known historical figures but in other cases it took most of the book to find out vaguely what their relevance was to Johnson's life. This would be fine for a reader who is an expert on Johnson, but for someone without that knowledge it was tiresome. A more serious criticism is that the book is a series of vignettes based on the last 20 years of Johnson's life and as such lacks a compelling story. I finished the book feeling that I had gained a little insight into the social history of the way Johnson and his friends lived, but not much else.

Well researched, 04 Jan 2003
Bainbridge has researched her subject well - I came away feeling that I had learned something about the characters of a number of famous names - James Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney, etc. However, the tale itself felt disjointed at times with the technique of switching between centuries (Each chapter is interspersed with a letter from the older Queeney, looking back on her family acquaintance). Johnson himself seemed an improbably unattractive character in temperament for a much courted lady to be chasing. In fact, most of the characters have very few endearing features.

It was a pleasing enough book, but not as enjoyable as I thought it could have been.

Booker Committee, 19 Nov 2002
This is novel number 16 for Ms. Beryl Bainbridge. In addition to these she has written an additional 4 works. Of the first 15 novels, 5 have been nominated for the prestigious Booker Award, however it has never been granted to her work. If there is another writer who has had one third of their work nominated but not rewarded, I have not come across one. Many other awards have found their way to this tremendous storyteller; I hope the Booker Folks catch up.

"According To Queeney", demonstrates once again the ease with which Ms. Beryl Bainbridge can reach, both back into history and to some of the great players of their times, and not only grasp, but create wonderful new tales. The century of choice this time is the 18th, and she chooses the formidable Samuel Johnson as her focus. This person alone would be plenty for most writers, however she has added actor David Garrick, poet Oliver Goldsmith, novelist Fanny Burney, and artist Joshua Reynolds. Each of these people could fill their own book, and more than one has. The brilliance of this work is that the author manages to bring them all together, give them all they're due, and does so in a fairly brief 216 pages. She does not merely name drop or make a passing reference. She manages to make all of the various players memorable; however brief their words allotted may appear to be. The truth is they read with much greater length.

A young counterpoint to Johnson is the Queeney of the title. An extremely precocious child, she is a favorite of Johnson's as well as a talented young mind he seeks to cultivate. This same Queeney becomes a correspondent for a researcher investigating her memories of her young years, as they relate to her and her mother, the latter of the two who Johnson becomes emotionally attached to. The mother eventually becomes available for marriage, and the events surrounding this opportunity bring the threads of the story together, and then to a close.

This is one of the best books that Ms. Bainbridge has written. I hope the people who nominate and then award The Booker Prize, once again nominate this work, which then will cause them to make a decision that differs from those in the past. If they do not, when her next work is released, she will then be the 6 times nominated author for the award.

Simply excellent, 08 Jan 2002
Berl Bainbridge's lastest novel manages to completely involve you in the lives of her complex characters and give a vivid picture of Georgian times whilst also supplying a very enetertaining read. I particularly enjoyed the way that the book's focus switches from one character to another, thus disturbing the reliability of the narrative and enhancing the reader's appreciation of the foibles and eccentricities of each one's point of view.

Baffling but enjoyable, 07 Jan 2002
This was an enjoyable, well-written but ultimately baffling book. It seems like it might have been an experiment to see whether it's possible to write about Johnson in a 'Johnsonian' way i.e. digressive, moody and episodic; if so, it works pretty well. If not, then I'm a bit stumped.
Like a number of Bainbridge's other excursions into historical fiction, like Master Georgie or the Birthday Boys, one is left wondering why the author chose the particular times and characters she's writing about; she doesn't seem particularly close to them; nor do they act as universals, so oddly do they behave. Still, she's a great writer of sentences. Some of them still go on ringing through my head weeks after reading them.

LIFE SEEN THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, 01 Sep 2008
It's difficult to know quite where to begin here, in the face of such overwhelming praise from so many satisfied readers. And yet over 600 being offered for sale from one penny perhaps speaks more eloquently of the book's appeal. It's not that it's badly written, just that it fails to illuminate Master Georgie's life. That after all should be its purpose, particularly where, as here, that person existed and at least one of the events described took place. The author is content to conjure up others to act as prisms, which would be a useful literary device if they illuminated the central figure, but instead we see him through a glass darkly. I may be in a minority of one, but it failed to live up to my expectations.

Complex, moving, beautifully cratfed, 04 Feb 2008
At first glance Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge suggests it might be quite a light book, an easy read, a period piece set in the mid-nineteenth century. This would be wrong. Master Georgie is no safe tale of country house manners, of marriages imagined by confined, embroidering young women. Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie is anything but a tale of such saccharine gentility.

Master Georgie is a surgeon and photographer, and the book is cast in six plates - photographic plates, not chapters. Death figures throughout. From start to finish morbidity crashes into the lives of the book's characters. We begin with Mr Moody, dead in a brothel bed, his host of minutes before in shock. Later we move to the Crimean War, where the carnage is graphic, extensive and apparently random. And even then individuals find their own personal ways of adding insult and injury to the suffering.

The book uses multiple points of view. We see things Master Georgie's way. Myrtle, an orphan he takes in, adds her perspective. The fussy geologist, Dr Potter, imprints his own version of reality. And still there are less than explained undercurrents, undeclared motives which affect them all. Thus, overall, Master Georgie is a complex and ambitious novel. Though it is set in a major war, the backdrop is never allowed to dominate. The characters experience the consequences of conflict and register their reactions, but we are never led by the nose trough the history or the geography of the setting.

But we also never really get to know these people. Myrtle, perhaps, has the strongest presence. She has a slightly jaundiced, certainly pragmatic approach to life. But even she finds the privations of wartime tough. Why the characters of Master Georgie are all so keen to offer themselves as support for the war effort is an aspect of the book that never fully revealed itself. And ultimately this was my criticism of Beryl Bainbridge's book. While the overall experience was both rewarding and not a little shocking, I found there was insufficient delineation between the characters and their differing motives. The beauty of the prose, however, more than made up for any shortcoming. The language created the mixed world of mid-nineteenth century politeness and juxtaposed this with the visceral vulgarities of soldiering and the general struggle of life. This rendered Master Georgie a complex, moving and quite beautiful book.


A great achievement, 08 Oct 2007
George Hardy, surgeon and photographer, sets of from Victorian England to do his patriotic duty in the Crimea. His tale his told by the people following him there: his (adoptive) sister Myrtle, the geologist Dr. Potter, and Hardy's photography-assistant Pompey Jones.

They all leave with their heads filled with newspaper-stories of gallant soldiers and heroes, and none of them is prepared for the harsh and cruel reality of warfare. The filth and misery of warfare will change them beyond recognition, and Bainbridge tells their story in haunting scenes.

Without a doubt one of the best novels I've read in a long time.

Sensitive, moving story about love and loss, 03 Feb 2003
The idea of writing this novel about a character, George Hardy, but confining its “voice” to the three people most close to him gives George, the person, an almost mystical air and at the same time is a very good device to reveal snippets of his life as the story progresses.
The three narrators are, predictably, very different and the events they describe often clash amusingly. Myrtle is the most reverential to George and it is through her voice we perceive the sensitivity of Bainbridge’s story- she is also the most sympathetic. Dr Potter provides the humour (at his own expense) that lightens an otherwise bleak situation. Finally, Pompey Jones is similar to Myrtle in his devotion but almost her rival in love- he also provides the first hand account of the battle scenes at the end of the book which are unfortunately the least interesting or polished part of the book.
Bainbridge infuses the book with ambiguities of sexuality that sit beside the harshness of the war very well. What is interesting is the amount of gore and unpleasantness that permeates the supposedly “prim” Victorian values of the characters.
By far superior to Every Man For Himself and deserves its Booker Prize nomination. The length of MG was a disappointment; however, at only just over two hundred pages long I felt it didn’t develop its characters as well as it could- especially having three different narrators. Also the conflict near the end didn’t have the dramatic tension or interest I thought it should. A fine novel but much too short.

pictures of love and war, 05 Sep 2001
i'm no great reader but found this book a 'special' one in the author's gift of depicting human ties to each other. The younger characters portrayed in the book for me seem the strongest and most interesting, though Master Georgie's character is unravelled well by the end of the book. While describing the horror of war in the book, the humaness of the characters give a colour to the story in the dark of war. Even though all the characters have their flaws there seems to be a heroism with the central characters that is beyond their facing of war. Beryl to me seems a master of sketching characters in this book.

A first class tale of icy disaster, 11 Apr 2008
This novel is a masterpiece, and infinitely more rewarding than the film 'Titanic' with which it shares its subject matter. The fateful voyage is seen through the eyes of Morgan, a rich, young man related to the owner of the shipping line. Concentrating mainly on the first class passengers, to which set Morgan belongs, it paints a portrait of an insular group with an impressive array of vices. The title of the novel says it all - "Every man for himself" - and there is plenty of selfishness, silliness and snobbery on display here. However Morgan himself is basically a decent young chap, and does his best to look out for his friends as the disaster unfolds its course; ultimately he manages to save himself too. This is not a long novel, nor does it need to be, as every word has its place.

magnificent, 25 Feb 2008
A book I buy and give to my friends and await their response. The writing is simply fab. I felt complelled to underline bits and keep them forever. It's no adventure story about the titanic... it's a mirror / satire / vignette of style, culture and time.
Loved it.

How did it win Whitbread!?!?, 06 Jan 2008
Every Man for Himself won the 1996 Whitbread award for best novel, which is second only to the Booker prize in terms of literary accolades. So when embarking on it I was expecting something rather special. As it turned out I was rather disappointed.

At 214 pages long it is of a suitable length but the majority of this (170 pages) concerns the slightly mundane lives of a small group of upper class passengers during the first few days of the Titanic's journey. There is no main plot-line, and sub-plots are superficial and short-lived. Once you have realized this it can make the reading rather sluggish as it is not heading in any particular direction. Character development is universally poor, even for the main character who acts as narrator, although it is interesting to hear an account of some of the real-life characters on the Titanic albeit fictional. Little detail is given in describing the various rooms and decks throughout which the story is set.

One of the redeeming features of this book is the humour, which curiously is not mentioned either in the blurb or in any revives on the back cover. Despite this it is frequently present and entirely intentional. It has similarities with Grossmith's `Diary of a Nobody' and even a hint of Bertie Wooster, although obviously much darker than these.

The last forty pages save this novel from ignominy as they concern the sinking of the vessel. This part is written very well and is probably the reason for the award. It is not as action-packed as one might expect, but is poignant probably more realistic than many recent accounts.

Every Man for Himself should be read for the last chapter and, as it is reasonably short, is worth suffering the mundane majority. Some people may enjoy the whole book as an account of upper class life of the period, but I do not see the attraction. One to get from the library.

Scathing indictment of the class system, 01 Oct 2007
Wonderful book, but don't go expecting a novel about the Titanic. Yes, of course the Titanic features, but it's there as a plot device to expose the attitudes and insecurities of the upper class on board. Just as the iceberg rips through the underside of the ship, so it also rips though the underbelly of society, and for the main character at least the sinking literally washes away the chains of his past. It's all here - repressed sex, unrepressed sex, class divides, the insecurities of the privileged who have never had to work for anything. A satisfying streak of black humour runs through it all too. It's not perfect - the characters of Melchett and Van Hopper for example are pretty interchangeable (maybe that's the point?), but the plot rattles along nicely, without any wasted passages.

Brilliant as always, 16 Mar 2006
Since you know what's going to happen to the Titanic it seems like madness to write a novel with this sort of backdrop. But Bainbridge is such a clever accomplished writer that she turns this inevitability very distinctly to her advantage. The story is magnetically dragged to it's conclusion by the ships date with destiny and along the way Bainbridge stimulates with writing that is perfection and characters that intrigue.

The pithy insights, the black humour and the spare but accurate descriptions fill her 'tardis' like writing. Bainbridge manages to convey in one sentence what it takes other writers several pages to achieve.

A FRIGHTFUL LOAD OF OLD TOSH, 30 Aug 2008
I began reading this with high hopes, based on the extracts of reviews on the back cover which proclaimed "razor sharp", "very funny" and "marvellously deft