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Beryl Bainbridge
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An Awfully Big Adventure: A Novel Hardcover – January 1, 1991

by Beryl Bainbridge (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 226 ratings
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Fifteen-year-old Stella is hired as an assistant stage manager for a theater repertory company's Christmas production of "Peter Pan," and although the director envisions a lighthearted play, Stella brings about an entirely different result
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  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harpercollins
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1991
  5. ISBN-10
    0060165448
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0060165444
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Booker Prize nominee, Bainbridge's latest novel is a compelling read, again demonstrating her acuity of observation and darkly comic view of life. In Stella Bradshaw, a teenage aspiring actress from the slums of Liverpool, Bainbridge limns a tough but beguiling character. She also deftly conveys the atmosphere of 1950s England, still grimly bomb-cratered, coping with food rationing and the visible casualties of maimed veterans. Her portrait of a seedy repertory troupe, whose members histrionically indulge in love affairs and unrequited passions, is classic. Into this company, directed by elegant Meredith Potter, comes Stella, inveigled into their midst by her uncle/guardian, who feels that the stage is Stella's only alternative to working in Woolworth's. Added to her knowledge of her illigitimacy and lower-class origins (the Bradshaws bathe once a fortnight, and share "the family towel"), Stella has the normal self-consciousness and naivete of adolescence overlaid by a strong will, guilelessness and lack of tact. Her innocent but dangerous impulses and her crush on Meredith, whose homosexuality eludes her, makes Stella a sort of Typhoid Mary of psychological injury; one after another, members of the troupe suffer from her impetuous behavior. Bainbridge's prose brims with pithy insights tinged with sardonic humor, and her plot moves swiftly to a chilling conclusion.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harpercollins; First American edition (January 1, 1991)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060165448
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060165444
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 226 ratings

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Beryl Bainbridge

Beryl Bainbridge

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Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
226 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Dim Dandy
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2007
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Addled teen girl stirs up trouble at a theater in post-war England.

I've read half a dozen of Bainbridge's novels now. I've enjoyed them all to one degree or another, but this is the one I liked best. She touches greatness with this book; maybe because she drew on her own experiences. Wickedly...funny...I guess...although "funny" isn't really the right word. I don't think the English language has a word to describe the essential nature of Bainbridge's writing. She nudges you in the ribs throughout, only she uses a large kitchen knife to do the nudging, and she snaps it off at the hilt on the last page. Her books leave me torn between relief that the tension is finally broken and remorse that...um...the tension is finally broken.

Whatever this style of fiction is, if you like deeply ironic stories that keep giving you "Aha! So that's what she meant!" moments for days or weeks after you finish them, then you'll probably like this book.

On the other hand, this book is extremely confusing on a first read, for a couple of reasons. To describe one reason would be to reveal a spoiler, so I'll stay mum. Another reason is that characters are thrown into the story as if you already know who they are. It's a bit like tuning into a movie that's already half over. If you don't like that, you'll probably hate this book. A page-turner, in the sense of the typical easily-digested bestseller, it's not. This is genuine literature.

Incidentally, if you haven't read the book, and you think you know what the title means, let me assure you that you couldn't possibly be more wrong.
8 people found this helpful
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Marilyn Stokes
3.0 out of 5 stars Fun
Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2019
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My intro to Beryl Bainbridge. She’s fun. I’ll order more of her books. Characters all flawed and lovable. Second or third tier writer but certainly a good author to find when you need an entertaining book.
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Millamant
5.0 out of 5 stars Stella by Starlight
Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2016
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Beryl Bainbridge is a very black writer, and this novel (filmed with Alan Rickman, and Hugh Grant and Peter Firth both playing brilliantly against type) is a very black, sad, funny and wonderful book. It's longtime favourite of mine, but I will acknowledge that it won't be everyone's cup of tea. The writing is taut and incisive, the story is gripping and the characters are flawed and larger than life.
4 people found this helpful
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Anne S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Witty and wry ~ read this book.
Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2016
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Set in the small confines of a theater company, the plot evolves with wit and style, while making a statement about the human condition. Terrific.
One person found this helpful
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Robyn Lee Markow
3.0 out of 5 stars An Awfully Sad Story..
Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2000
I read this book expecting something more lighthearted,perhaps,But jeeze,this was depressing! The author obviously is down on the theatrical world(I read on the jacket cover she was a young actress before becoming a writer) Maybe she had some really negative experiences in the theatah,but the book was so down and pretty mean-spirited as well. Yes,there are a lot of jerks in show biz,but, I've through personal experience met a lot of great people as well,however everyone in Ms. Bainbridge's book was rather unlikable. No wonder the poor girl went nuts! A little too cynical for my tastes,but it had it's moments...
2 people found this helpful
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Lissa
2.0 out of 5 stars An Awfully Awful Adventure
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2000
This dark and dreary book set in post war Liverpool(mid-50s) is really drawn out and confusing. The story is that of Stella, a sixteen year old actress, as she learns the hard way where acting stops and reality begins. She chases the director, and in trying to get his love, romances an aging actor who turns out to be her father. Tha characters are poorly developed past names, except for Stella, but she unfortunately, is hard to follow. She doesn't act normally, and the reader is left to puzzle over her. Near the end of the novel, we find that she was abandoned by her mother as a baby and is left with the deep physcoloical scars. This book loses the reader on page one, making it hard for the reader to want to fumble through it.
One person found this helpful
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Lady Fancifull
5.0 out of 5 stars Priestley's Good Companions smacked about by Joe Orton
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2013
The Good Companions  is a lovely, warm, fuzzy, well written book (a favourite of mine) about the trials, tribulations, triumphs and tragedies of a small travelling music hall company in the 1920s

Jump forwards 30 years to the setting of Bainbridge's book about the trials, tribulations, triumphs (very few) and tragedies (quite a lot) of a Liverpool repertory company. Originally published in 1989, Bainbridge draws upon some of her own experiences as an actor around that time.

Gone is Priestley's enjoyable, rather sentimental approach. Instead, we have a blackly, bleakly funny and unholy mixture of sex, love, death and religion, all wrapped up in an atmosphere of lower middle-class prurience and and things which are not quite nice and musn't be mentioned (Orton's territory)

This is the story of Stella, an awkward, difficult, naive and impressionable mid-teens. She is also adept at wearing a don't tangle with me mask, making her appear much more hard-boiled and insensitive than she really is. Strings are pulled to get her a job as an ASM in the rep company, as her imaginative, rather histrionic abilities at play-acting her way through her life, suggest to those around her that she may have a theatrical gift.

Bainbridge structures her book beautifully, setting something up at the start, which is only finally revealed at the end, when she collapses, one by one, her house of cards, with a selection of hinted at revelations which are simultaneously as bleak, horribly funny, and shocking as Orton. There is as much going on here as there are in some of the major themes of Greek tragedy, except Bainbridge does the great trick of wrapping the tragedy with absurd, comedic touches.

I'm working through re-reading Bainbridge, following my reading of the wonderful  Beryl Bainbridge: Artist, Writer, Friend  which connects her life, her writing and her art, and this was a wonderful re-read.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Hazel F.
5.0 out of 5 stars A real good read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 7, 2019
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I loved Beryl Bainbridges gritty, straightforward style. Good story with a few twists at the end. It describes the post war era when everything was run down and people were quite poor. It reminded me of the kitchen sink dramas which were so popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Everyone was enjoying a bit of realism then. Brilliant and well worth a read.
2 people found this helpful
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talmine
4.0 out of 5 stars A Bizarre Ending
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 9, 2017
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The title refers to the first year or so (?) that Stella Bradshaw, an aspiring actress spends with a Liverpool repertory company in the immediate aftermath of WW2 . Stella is the daughter of a telephonist operator (mostly female) who entered a competition to find those with the best speaking voice. Her mother comes out top and has to move to London and (because she expects to find fame and fortune) decides to stay there persuading her sister Lily and husband Vernon to 'adopt' Stella (perhaps because they had no children of there own?). She is naturally inquisitive of course about her mother and is finally given a telephone number to ring.

When the story opens Stella is about 15/16 keen to start in repertory with dreams of romance in the profession. She is given the title of 'assistant stage manager'. At first she falls for Mr Meredith the company director who is probably 40 (?) years older. When, many months later she eventually realises he is quite beyond her reach she lets herself be seduced by O'Hara a minor celebrity who has been hired to play Hook in the company's performance of Peter Pan.

Stella is pretty disillusioned by then and when he mentions that he is married, saying do you mind? she replied "why should I?, most men your age usually are". "You're sure you like doing this are you?". She replied that nobody made her do anything she didn't want. O'Hara feels slightly shocked. He feels he is corrupting her.

Later he is found drowned in the Albert Dock. This incident is described in some detail and appears to be a genuine accident, the result of a foolish attempt to enter some blitzed warehouses, where he wanted to 'howl like a dog and hear it echo all around him', trying to get rid of the image of 'Stella holding a baby in her arms'. Clearly Stella had pissed him off.
I can only surmise the author wanted it to be mistaken for suicide.

Later Stella telephones her mother. The 'conversation' can be found on the very LAST PAGE of the book.
3 people found this helpful
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Caterkiller
3.0 out of 5 stars Engaging but ultimately unconvincing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 22, 2008
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There are some parts of this book that you cannot help but enjoy: the lack of glamour in the running of a provincial theatre where the cast complain about "the digs" and are forever tripping over carelessly discarded brooms and suchlike back stage. Bainbridge tries to do something more than just satirise the egos of minor celebs, however, she wants her main character, Stella, to go on a journey of discovery and this is where the book monumentally fails. Some revewiers have compared the denoument to "The Sixth Sense"; unfortunately it is nowhere near as good. By the end we already know that Stella is psychologically unbalanced by the way she quickly falls for Meredith (though we never learn precisely why) and the wayshe allows herself to be used and abused by multiple men throughout the book. Given the subject matter and characters Bainbridge could have done a lot more with this than she does. The writing is imaginative and I personally enjoyed the occassional flourishes of flowery prose usually employed when describing something quite mundane, but ultimately the plot could have been better.
3 people found this helpful
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Anne Farmer
3.0 out of 5 stars The humour is gentle but funny.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 11, 2014
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Seems rather dated now and one cannot imagine a young person being so ingenious these days .I am sure that if you were familiar with Liverpool there would be an extra interest. The humour is gentle but funny .
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Wellyman99
4.0 out of 5 stars True BB style
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 1, 2018
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True BB style, not my normal read but I enjoyed it .
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