An Awfully Big Adventure

By Beryl Bainbridge

This is my year for reading women, and I had to start somewhere, so I bought books by two older British novelists, both deceased but still often mentioned: Anita Brookner and Beryl Bainbridge.

Both have been profiled in the Guardian recently, Brookner because she died, Bainbridge (I think) because someone had written her biography. However the point about the Bainbridge profile was the wild and emotionally distraught life she had led – and how she somehow just kept on writing through so many affairs and disappointments.

If I remember, the saddest bit was hearing that near the end of her life Bainbridge had fallen for some young fake admirer who conned her out of her savings. She was needy – that was the gist of the profile. Yet in her Wikipedia entry, it says that by the end of Bainbridge’s life – she died in 2010 – she’d become a “national treasure.”

Brookner and Bainbridge make an interesting pair. They were almost exact contemporaries. Brookner was born in 1928 in Herne Hill, the only daughter of Jewish immigrant parents (the Bruckners), while Bainbridge was born in Liverpool in 1932 into what sounds like a quirky, working-class background.

The Liverpool connection means something. Some of my closest friends originate in that city. David’s father (Ron Rubin) and Pat’s mother (Brenda Turner) are also exact contemporaries of Bainbridge. I wonder if they knew her?

Some of my own ancestors passed through Liverpool on their way to the New World, and others actually remained in Lancashire when the party was over. All this appears on a family tree that my Uncle Lawrence has distributed. When I showed it to David, we got to thinking that our families must have known each other – round about 1900. The Jewish community in Liverpool wasn’t so huge.

An Awfully Big Adventure is the story of a 16-year-old girl, Stella, getting taken into a Liverpool repertory theatre. It’s an extremely funny book. The actors of the company are the cast of the story – and the comedy is their foibles and behind-the-scenes melodramas as they put on a series of plays for the season. Stella is a strong-willed, feisty piece of work – abandoned by her mother, adopted by her loving Uncle Vernon – and she sees the theatre as her only chance (“It’s either this or Woolworths”). Once arrived, she settles in quickly, falling in love with the affected stage director, Meredith Potter. (He’s gay, but she can’t see this.) The deeper drama, though, is about the celebrated actor, O’Hara, with whom Stella has a mysterious connection.

Beneath the comedy is a sad and poignant story of a girl who has lost her mother. Stella has always been given to pretensions and make-believe. She invents stories. She can be haughty, dramatic – or very dismissive. Throughout the book, she spurns her Uncle Vernon and his wife, Lily, both of whom are trying so hard to back her. Bainbridge spins this out beautifully and finally reveals the backstory.

The macabre element – threaded all the way through but never fully exposed – is that O’Hara may be Stella’s father. When he joins the company and seduces Stella we may disapprove, but we indulge it because Stella seems to be in control. However the story is heading for something far more shocking than a bit of sexual exploitation.

Bainbridge’s An Awfully Big Adventure (1989) and Brookner’s A Start in Life (1982) both look back to the 1950s – when England was empty, bare and shabby and the War was recent trauma. From 2017 this seems like another world. And yet it doesn’t. Both books extend just a bit beyond my own living memory.

People write from their own experience, so it’s easy to relate each fictional girl to her creator. Bruckner’s Ruth is sad, self-contained, practical and undemanding. Love will pass her by – and she’ll accept that without screaming. Bainbridge’s Stella is ambitious, outrageous and complex – and she shall have drama wherever she goes.

Now see the photos of the mature authors, Anita Brookner and Beryl Bainbridge. Brookner looks unmarked, a neat, trim little woman with short, light hair and a reputation for holding herself aloof. Bainbridge, on the other hand, with long, dark hair and sultry brown eyes, looks careworn – her ruddy skin bespeaking major nicotine use – and carrying, as we know, this wild child reputation – surely not so far from Stella.

Which author did I prefer to read? Bainbridge by a million miles. An Awfully Big Adventure is imbued with brilliant humour – this must have been Bainbridge’s saving grace – not to mention fine observation of a large cast of characters, in what is really a short book. Beneath the surface lurks a frightening tragedy, that’s true, but Bainbridge’s route is through comedy – and I loved that.