A Quiet Life
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'The underrated A Quiet Life is one of the funniest books I have ever read' HILARY MANTEL
'One of the best novelists of her generation' GUARDIAN
Seventeen-year-old Alan can't stand rows. But, though the Second World War has ended, peace hangs by a fine thread at home: his troublesome sister Madge creeps off for night-time liaisons with a German POW; their ineffectual father - broken by the hardships of war and an unhappy marriage can't put food on the table despite the family's middle-class manners.
Meanwhile, his mother pursues her escapist fantasies in romantic novels and love affairs. Obedient, faithful Alan is trapped among them all, the focus of their jibes and resentment, as inexorably the family heads towards disaster.
Beryl Bainbridge's classic early novel is a vintage story of English domestic life, laced with sadness, irony and wicked black humour.
'One of the best novelists of her generation' GUARDIAN
Seventeen-year-old Alan can't stand rows. But, though the Second World War has ended, peace hangs by a fine thread at home: his troublesome sister Madge creeps off for night-time liaisons with a German POW; their ineffectual father - broken by the hardships of war and an unhappy marriage can't put food on the table despite the family's middle-class manners.
Meanwhile, his mother pursues her escapist fantasies in romantic novels and love affairs. Obedient, faithful Alan is trapped among them all, the focus of their jibes and resentment, as inexorably the family heads towards disaster.
Beryl Bainbridge's classic early novel is a vintage story of English domestic life, laced with sadness, irony and wicked black humour.
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- Published: Mar 07 2013
- Pages: 176
- 195 x 130mm
- ISBN: 9781844088638
Press Reviews
- Guardian
One of the best novelists of her generation
Hilary Mantel
The underrated A Quiet Life is one of the funniest books I have ever read . . . There is something shockingly plain about her strongest books, utterly uncompromising
David Evans
IndependentBy the end of the novel they have come to represent two different kinds of people: those who care what people think, and those who don't. Bainbridge's fiction owes its enduring sharpness and vitality to the fact that she always belonged squarely in the latter category
Hilary Mantel
The underrated A Quiet Life is one of the funniest books I have ever read . . . There is something shockingly plain about her strongest books, utterly uncompromising.
- Guardian
One of the best novelists of her generation.