Featured New Authors
Featured Author: Beryl Bainbridge
Featured Author: Beryl Bainbridge
With News and Reviews From the Archives of The New York Times
In This Feature
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 Brendan King/ Carroll & Graf |
| Beryl Bainbridge |
(1973)
“. . . certainly ranks in content with the more celebrated thrillers of corrupt childhood, but it has literary and psychological virtues as well.”
(1974)
“. . . the events leading up to the murder are too hastily jerry-built into the second half of an otherwise leisurely and careful book. But Beryl Bainbridge, in ‘The Secret Glass,’ has the eye and the language
of a serious novelist.”
(1975)
“Briskly, her eye on the telling detail, Miss Bainbridge follows this little domestic comedy through all its alarms and trivialities until we have the exact flavor of its poignancies.”
(1976)
“This is a strange, sly novel with a great deal to say about the mixture of resentment and dependency often mistaken for love.”
(1977)
“Muting her technique to match her subject, Beryl Bainbridge’s new novel works with the sly precision of a trap. . . . a subtle and protean writer.”
(1978)
“At her best, Mrs. Bainbridge infuses the flotsam of modern industrialism with an almost talismanic power. . . . In ‘Injury Time,’ though, she tells exactly what troubles her characters, and it’s just the
familiar Op-Ed page catalogue of late 20th-century ills . . .”
(1979)
“Beryl Bainbridge cannot write badly; and her dialogue . . . always shows her faultless ear and talent for understated comedy.”
(1981)
“. . . quite funny in the bleak, close-to-the-bone style that the author has developed and refined over the years.”
(1982)
“This novel, rich as it is in grotesquerie, has the kind of dreamy, evocative quality we associate with the films of Eric Rohmer. But it lacks the jarring dazzle of her best work.”
(1984)
“. . . a classic example of a good writer forcing out a poor, uninspired project.”
(1985)
“Bainbridge has taken the historical facts of this mundane murder case and . . . fashioned them into an enthralling novel . . . an extraordinarily lively work of the imagination . . .”
(1987)
“. . . these stories share a severely limited image bank . . . such repetitions do a disservice to Ms. Bainbridge’s usually agile talent. Indeed, they contribute to the feeling that these stories are nearly as attenuated
as the world portrayed by the author.”
(1990)
“It is Miss Bainbridge’s style that makes her a seductive writer — her manner, not her matter, that is so good. . . . Her genius is for a tapestry of ephemera.”
(1991)
“A former actress herself, Ms. Bainbridge chronicles the backstage antics of her fictional theater company with knowing aplomb. . . . Yet there’s nothing condescending or cruel about her portraits.”
(1994)
“Bringing her subversive and ever-mischievous imagination to bear on the subject, she fills in the details neglected by Scott’s diary, deepening the portrait of stiff-upper-lip heroism by adding the sometimes ugly
shadows that suggest real life.”
(1996)
“. . . [contains] some of the most convincing and slyly revealing first-person narrative I’ve ever read . . . [a] brilliant novel . . .”
(1998)
“Unsentimental, politically incorrect and unpretentious, this collection can be enjoyed even if you are not familiar with Bainbridge’s Camden Lock neighborhood or her novels.”
(March 1, 1981)
In this interview, Bainbridge talks about her past and her writing technique: “I pinch newspaper stories that have a strong narrative plot, then put in everything I can remember about my family and friends.”
(May 29, 1988)
“[Carey’s writing has a] magnificent vitality, that ebullient delight in character, detail and language that turns a novel into an important book.”
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