Reading guide: An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge
Full of backstage scandal and romantic intrigue, this darkly comic novel is about class, the long shadow of war, and unrequited first love
Monthly Spotlight: An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge
Beryl Bainbridge’s darkly perceptive coming-of-age tale was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1990
A Booker Prizes favourite, Beryl Bainbridge was nominated for the award an impressive six times. She never won but said that she was ‘just very pleased to have been noticed’.
Bainbridge was shortlisted five times, in 1973, 1974, 1990, 1996 and 1998 for The Dressmaker, The Bottle Factory Outing, An Awfully Big Adventure, Every Man for Himself and Master Georgie, as well as being longlisted in 2001 for According to Queeney.
She published 20 novels over her lifetime, as well as multiple short-story collections and non-fiction works. Bainbridge died in 2010.
An Awfully Big Adventure is set in Liverpool in 1950. Teenage Stella is hired as assistant stage manager by a repertory theatre company and soon becomes infatuated with the director, Meredith – failing to notice that he has no interest in her or any other woman.
When the celebrated actor O’Hara arrives to take the lead in the theatre company’s production of Peter Pan, it sets in motion a backstage drama of lost innocence, tragedy, and miscommunication.
- By
- Beryl Bainbridge
- Published by
- Duckworth
A darkly comic novel about class, the long shadow of war, and unrequited first love