This wonderful novel showing Beryl Bainbridge at her darkly comic best - out for the first time as an Abacus paperback. Beryl Bainbridge dazzles readers in this offbeat, haunting yet hilarious novel.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize Named 'one of the greatest novels of all time' by the Observer With a new introduction by Amanda Craig
Freda and Brenda are friends spending their days in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory in North London. When a works outing materialises it offers promise for Freda, but terror for Brenda. Unexpected passions run high on the chilly day of liberty and their lives are never the same again. Beryl Bainbridge dazzles readers in this offbeat, haunting yet hilarious novel.
'An outrageously funny and horrifying novel' GRAHAM GREENE
'Two very complex, funny female characters. They need each other although they would never admit it' MAXINE PEAKE 'Superb... vibrant... profoundly comic' THE TIMES
'Few writers offer more control and delight' GUARDIAN
Beryl Bainbridge wrote seventeen novels, two travel books and five plays for stage and television. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, she won literary awards including the Whitbread Prize and Author of the Year at the British Book Awards. She died in July 2010.
