I’m jumping right in to the bibliography of Beryl Bainbridge with three novels – THE BOTTLE FACTORY OUTING, YOUNG ADOLPH, and THE BIRTHDAY BOYS.
Bainbridge was a writer who started off as a female variation of the angry young man working class writer of the 1950’s mixed with observations on the social experiments/evolution of the 1960’s. Around the late 1980’s, she turned into a writer of historical fiction albeit not of the starchy, stiff kind but rather more surreal with multiple viewpoints often part of the story.
THE BOTTLE FACTORY OUTING, which seems to be the best of her books according to the consensus of literary critics I’ve read and which I’ll be reading first, is an example of the first type of Bainbridge’s novels. YOUNG ADOLPH and THE BIRTHDAY BOYS are an example of the historical type.
In an obituary for Bainbridge (She passed away in 2010), her writing is described as “mordant” which can be sarcastic or incisive. I’m hoping for both. I will post reviews as I finish each book.
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