A Weekend With Claude by Beryl Bainbridge

A Weekend With Claude by Beryl Bainbridge

'Extremely lively' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

'A work of art' SCOTSMAN

'Genius' SUNDAY TIMES

An old snapshot shows a group of friends lounging in the sunshine, on a weekend in the country at the invitation of bearded, satyric Claude and his wife Julia. The girl in the centre is dreamy Lily, whose latest failed love affair forms the purpose of the weekend, as Lily's friends set out to help her ensnare an unwitting father for her unborn child. Next to her is Norman, a Marxist romantic hell-bent on seducing his milk-white hostess; behind them is old, persecuted Shebah; and slightly apart, the young man on whom all hopes are pinned: quiet, pleasant Edward.

Told through the fractured narratives of Claude, Lily, Shebah and Norman, in Beryl Bainbridge's first published novel a darkly comic weekend of friendship and failure unravels.

It is her skewed and deadly grasp of the immediate that makes Bainbridge's work uniqueFormerly an actress, she has an uncanny ear for dialogue, a perfect sense of timing and a terse, elliptical narrative style that combine to create a dramatic, or cinematic, tension * New York Times *
Extremely lively and incisive entertainment * Times Literary Supplement *
[Bainbridge's] genius lies in the comic evocation of the mundane life against which her characters are in revolt * Sunday Times *
A riotous, macabre imagination * Daily Telegraph *
Delicious . . . Very elegant and pleasing . . . A work of art * Scotsman *
Extremely lively and incisive entertainment * Times Literary Supplement *
Her genius lies in the comic evocation of the mundane life against which her characters are in perpetual and ineffectual revolt * Sunday Times *
Delicious . . . very elegant and pleasing . . . A work of art * Scotsman *

Beryl Bainbridge (1932-2010) wrote eighteen novels, two travel books and five plays for stage and television. Five of her novels were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Every Man for Himself and Injury Time won the Whitbread Prize, The Bottle Factory Outing won the Guardian Fiction Prize and Master Georgie won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Four of her novels including An Awfully Big Adventure were adapted for film. In 2011, Bainbridge was honoured posthumously with a special Best of Beryl Man Booker Prize in recognition of her outstanding career. Her final novel, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, was published in 2011.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781844088546
ISBN 10	1844088545
Title	A Weekend With Claude
Author	Beryl Bainbridge
Series	Virago Modern Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Little, Brown Book Group
Year published	2012-12-06
Number of pages	160
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.