{"product_id":"awfully-big-adventure-book-beryl-bainbridge-9780715622049","title":"An Awfully Big Adventure","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA blackly comic story of the secrets, sex, and violence behind the curtain of a repertory theater's postwar production of \u003ci\u003ePeter Pan\u003c\/i\u003e: its close observation and hilarity are underlain by a sense of tragedy as deep as any in fiction. (\u003ci\u003eThe Times)\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLiverpool, 1950. Against the grimy backdrop of the gray postwar city, a shabby, scandal-steeped repertory theater company rehearses for their Christmas performance of Peter Pan. Treading the boards for the first time is sixteen-year-old Stella Bradshaw, ambitious, idealistic, and still overwhelmingly innocent. She falls hard for the rakish, monocled director, Meredith Potter, but, unable to attract his attentions--and not understanding why he's spending quite so much time with their male colleagues--she turns to another colleague to initiate her into the ways of love. Enter the celebrated P. L. O'Hara, a dashing leading man who's nursing secrets of his own. When the curtain is up, fantastical entertainment abounds, but backstage a very different drama is playing out: a pitch-black comedy of indiscretion, intrigue, and eventual tragedy.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShortlisted for the Booker Prize, and dusted with that magical air of Pinteresque menace and Sparkian malice  that] lingers around the margins of  all of Beryl Bainbridge's] fiction, (Michiko Kakutani, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e), \u003ci\u003eAn Awfully Big Adventure\u003c\/i\u003e is one of the author's very best--and best-loved--novels.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49884858679569,"sku":"GOR013467393","price":3.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50483588858129,"sku":"GOR003708106","price":4.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50657682948369,"sku":"GOR008182931","price":4.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50953078112529,"sku":"GOR003715143","price":4.7,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0715622048.jpg?v=1750700811","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/awfully-big-adventure-book-beryl-bainbridge-9780715622049","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}