
The Booker Prize and the best of Beryl Bainbridge
Born 90 years ago, the much-loved Dame was shortlisted five times for the Booker Prize - the most that any author has been shortlisted without actually winning
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. Although Bainbridge was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, she never won. Some degree of correction occurred in 2011 when, after a public vote, her 1998-shortlisted novel Master Georgie won a one-off prize, The Man Booker Best of Beryl.