An Awfully Big Adventure

ISBN: 1961341921

Author: Bainbridge, Beryl

Condition: New

A blackly comic story of the secrets, sex, and violence behind the curtain of a repertory theaters postwar production of Peter Pan: its close observation and hilarity are underlain by a sense of tragedy as deep as any in fiction. (The Times))Liverpool, 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 hes 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. OHara, a dashing leading man whos 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.Shortlisted 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 Bainbridges] fiction, (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review), An Awfully Big Adventure is one of the authors very best-and best-loved-novels.