Top

We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.

The Bottle Factory Outing

On sale

2nd September 2010

Price: £9.99

Select a format

Selected: ebook / ISBN-13: 9780748125746

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

Short-listed for the Booker Prize and named ‘one of the greatest novels of all time’ by The Observer, this riveting novel shows Beryl Bainbridge at her darkly comic best.

Freda and Brenda spend their days working in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory. A work outing offers promise for Freda and terror from Brenda; passions run high on that chilly day of freedom, and life after the outing never returns to normal.

Inspired by author Beryl Bainbridge’s own experiences working at a London wine-factory in the 1970s, The Bottle Factory Outing examines issues of friendship and consent, making the novel timelier than ever. Readers will be dazzled by this offbeat, haunting yet hilarious Guardian fiction prize-winning novel.

‘An outrageously funny and horrifying story’ Graham Greene (Observer)

What's Inside

Read More Read Less

Reviews

Maxine Peake
Two very complex, funny female characters... They need each other although they would never admit it
Kirkus
How well Bainbridge uses both recognizable and even common circumstances and, this time, outright humor as shock absorbers... She's a considerable writer - sharp and knowing
Sam Jordison, Guardian
The masterful restraint of Beryl Bainbridge's sentences reveals an author in complete control of her artistry, while the book itself displays unexpected political aptness...It is, in short, superb prose. There are perhaps few sentences that stand out as individual gems. But there are also few writers who offer more control and delight line-by-line
Sunday Times
After turning the final page of The Bottle Factory Outing, one can only gasp, and grope for the right word...Such an atmosphere of impending doom has not been created since Brighton Rock - except that Beryl Bainbridge is mercilessly comic instead of being mercilessly vicious. Specialising in successive denouements, and with her gift for collecting the most amazing detail, she is so in control of her marvellous little story that one hangs on her words from first to last. What originality, what pleasure
Graham Greene
An outrageously funny and horrifying novel
John Self, The Times
There is a uniquely northern comedy in Beryl Bainbridge's novels... It chimes with life's absurdity and hard-won wisdom
The Times
This is a superb novel. It is taut in construction, expansive in characterization, vibrant in atmosphere and profoundly comic
Daily Mail
Bainbridge's barbed wit is underpinned by poignant failed dreams... This is a winner by any measure