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A Weekend with Claude — Beryl Bainbridge
A group of eccentricfriends makes a mess of their shared holiday in this witty novel from one of Britain's best-loved authors.
When Claude stumbles upon an old photo, memories of a weekend spent in the company of his friends come back in full force. In the snapshot are Lily, a thick-ankled girl who is unlucky in love; Edward, the “awfully quiet and awfully nice” geologist Lily is trying to woo; “Victorian Norman,” a factory worker and Marxist romantic; and Shebah, an elderly Jewish drama queen who used to be in show business. But during their country-house holiday, there was deception and drama lurking behind the scenes.
Through the voices of each of Claude's guests, author Beryl Bainbridge weaves a darkly comic tale of everyday people grasping for love -- or lust -- as a means of revolt against the mundane normalcy of their lives. Confined for a night and a day, they make a muck of all social pleasantries and put their friendships on the line.
First written in 1967, then revised and republished in 1982, A Weekend with Claude marks a stylistic departure from Bainbridge's renowned third-person novels, such as The Bottle Factory Outing and Injury Time. Yet the master writer's singular morbidity and black humor abound, making this a welcome and entertaining read with “the kind of dreamy, evocative quality we associate with the films of Éric Rohmer” (TheNew York Times).
When Claude stumbles upon an old photo, memories of a weekend spent in the company of his friends come back in full force. In the snapshot are Lily, a thick-ankled girl who is unlucky in love; Edward, the “awfully quiet and awfully nice” geologist Lily is trying to woo; “Victorian Norman,” a factory worker and Marxist romantic; and Shebah, an elderly Jewish drama queen who used to be in show business. But during their country-house holiday, there was deception and drama lurking behind the scenes.
Through the voices of each of Claude's guests, author Beryl Bainbridge weaves a darkly comic tale of everyday people grasping for love -- or lust -- as a means of revolt against the mundane normalcy of their lives. Confined for a night and a day, they make a muck of all social pleasantries and put their friendships on the line.
First written in 1967, then revised and republished in 1982, A Weekend with Claude marks a stylistic departure from Bainbridge's renowned third-person novels, such as The Bottle Factory Outing and Injury Time. Yet the master writer's singular morbidity and black humor abound, making this a welcome and entertaining read with “the kind of dreamy, evocative quality we associate with the films of Éric Rohmer” (TheNew York Times).
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