A collection of Beryl Bainbridge's complete short stories, these will delight the many fans of her Booker-shortlisted novels.
Women in fox furs, not-quite travelling salesmen, the twilight zone of genteel hotels and lodging houses - these newly reissued short stories are quintessential Bainbridge territory. Blazing with her irreplaceable talent, Mum and Mr Armitage takes us on a journey through a unique fictional terrain; from a country house in Sussex to a script-writing course on a cruise liner. Macabre, witty and brilliantly observed, they confirm Beryl Bainbridge's place as one of our greatest writers of fiction.
A fine and invigorating writer - TLS
Beryl Bainbridge is a genuine original, with a macabre imagination and a wonderful gift for catching tones of speech - New York Review of Books
Beryl Bainbridge is the author of seventeen novels, two travel books and five plays for stage and television. The Dressmaker, The Bottle Factory Outing, An Awfully Big Adventure, Every Man for Himself and Master Georgie (which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Every Man for Himself was awarded the Whitbread Novel of the Year Prize. She won the Guardian Fiction Prize with The Dressmaker and the Whitbread Prize with Injury Time. The Bottle Factory Outing, Sweet William and The Dressmaker have all been adapted for film, as was An Awfully Big Adventure, which starred Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. Beryl Bainbridge died in July 2010.