Beryl Bainbridge

Beryl Bainbridge (1932-2010) was one of the most acclaimed British novelists of the twentieth century. Born in Liverpool, she was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times (and posthumously awarded a special Best of Beryl award). She was made a Dame in 2000. Her novels are known for their dark comedy, psychological insight and the way they find the extraordinary lurking within the mundane. An Awfully Big Adventure is set in a Liverpool repertory theatre in the 1950s, following a young stage-struck girl who joins a production of Peter Pan. Beneath the theatrical glamour lies a world of manipulation, sexual exploitation and the loss of innocence, told with Bainbridge's characteristic deadpan wit and devastating emotional precision. The novel was adapted into a film starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant. Available as both a book and an audiobook, An Awfully Big Adventure offers brilliant listening and reading — darkly funny, psychologically acute and unmistakably the work of one of Britain's finest and most original novelists.