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Nov 21, 1932 — Jul 2, 2010· 77 yrs

UNITED KINGDOM AUTHOR · FICTION · GENERAL

Bainbridge, Beryl

Also known as: Beryl Bainbridge, Bainbridge, Beryl.

27
BOOKS
4.0
AVG RATING (4)
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Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge (21 November 1932 – 2 July 2010) was an English writer. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often macabre tales set among the English working class. She won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996, and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 as a national treasure. In 2008, The Times named Bainbridge on their list of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Liverpool, United Kingdom
Wikipedia

There had been a nasty incident, half-away between France and England, when young Adolf, turning in a moment of weakness to take a last look at the hills of Boulogne, had come face to face with a man wearing a beard and thick spectacles.

— from Young Adolf, 1978

Most acclaimed

#2

Sweet William

1993

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Ann is waiting to be summoned to America by her fiance Gerald when she meets William. He gives her a ring, his body, his love, just as he gave them to his ex-wife, his current wife and his mistresses. So how can Ann live with William? More to the point, how can she live without him?

#1

Young Adolf

1978

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In this hilarious and ingenious novel set in 1912, Young Adolf Hitler, age twenty-three, comes to Liverpool, penniless, traveling with false papers, and perpetually stalked by imaginary enemies. His half-brother, Alois, who works as a hotel waiter and a salesman, has convinced him to assist in building a commercial empire based on the newly invented safety razor. Adolf moves in with Alois, his Irish wife, and their infant son and promptly inconveniences them: He is difficult, depressed, lies for days on the sofa, bungles the simplest jobs, and has not yet found himself. In episodes of disarming comedy, at every turn young Adolf becomes involved in ludicrous and embarrassing situations, so much so that he would never, for the rest of his life, mention his laughably awkward visit to England. Taking on one of history's odder incidents with her considerable imagination and wicked sense of humor, Beryl Bainbridge makes Adolf Hitler as absurd a figure in words as Charlie Chaplin made him on film.

#3

A quiet life

1976

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"In genteel poverty and unremitting strife they live together - a father, a mother, their son, a teenage daughter - in the shabby confines of their small, English seaside house. The Second World War has ended, but not the battles waged daily on this domestic front.". "To escape the life she herself has half created, the romantically disappointed mother spends half the night reading novels in the railway station, while the melancholy father, in all ways bankrupt, weeps in front of the radio. In the woods, where land mines still lie undetected, the fifteen-year-old Madge sneaks off after dark to tryst with a German P.O.W. And Alan, the troubled adolescent son who tries vainly to retreat into silence, suffers the family he can neither alter or ignore, at least not until it has been destroyed."--BOOK JACKET.

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