
The Booker Best of Beryl
The late, much-loved Dame Beryl Bainbridge was shortlisted five times for the Booker Prize - the most that any author has been shortlisted - but never actually won.
Surprises abound in Beryl Bainbridge’s unsettling comic novel, praised by fellow author Graham Greene as both ‘outrageously funny and horrifying’.
Freda and Brenda spend their days together working in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory, and their nights sharing a double bed - separated by a prudent row of books - in their pokey London bed-sit. A work outing offers promise for Freda and terror for Brenda; passions run high on that chilly day of freedom, and life after the outing never returns to normal.
About the Author
Beryl Bainbridge, who died in 2010, was a Booker Prize heroine. She was an actress (appearing in Coronation Street) before becoming a novelist and much-loved, cigarette-dangling public figure.