Superb… taut in construction, expansive in characterisation, vibrant in atmosphere and profoundly comic’ The Times

To which Brenda did not reply. She looked and kept silent, watching Freda’s smooth white face and the shining feather of yellow hair that swung to the curve of her jaw. She had large blue eyes with curved lashes, a gentle rosy mouth, a nose perfectly formed. She was five foot ten in height, twenty-six years old, and she weighed sixteen stone. All her life she had cherished the hope that one day she would become part of a community, a family. She wanted to be adored and protected, she wanted to be called ‘little one’. Harry Blamires likens Freda's romantic dreams to those of Joyce's Gerty MacDowell in Ulysses and he concludes "Beryl Bainbridge manages plots of escalating comedy and grotesqueness with consummate skill. She is brilliant at scattering humour over seemingly gruesome terrain". [6]Bainbridge's story is set in a small Italian-run factory somewhere in London which bottles wines and some spirits. Freda and Brenda are two members of the workforce , working alongside some middle aged Italians who clean and label the bottles for despatch. The pair share a workbench by day and a miserable bedsit room by night. They also share a bed though they build a wall of books to ensure there is a clear demarkation of space on the mattress. However, it's the relationship between Freda and Brenda that is the heart and soul of the book. But I hesitate to call it a friendship - it reads and feels more like a kind of social and emotional marriage of convenience than a friendship. And from the outset, the odd feel to the book is rooted in this slightly bizarre pair. Their first meeting is odd - Freda virtually force-feeding Brenda into being adopted/taken under Freda's wing(not a terribly cosy or safe place to be!!), after a chance encounter in a shop as Brenda flees from a disastrous marriage, a seriously mad mother-in-law and a husband who is the village 'soak' essentially! The oddness is maintained in their everyday lives - for example, separated at night in the bed they share by a bolster of books of all things!

Provides two print areas for your artwork/logo; a band of 22.78cm x 1.2cm around the top of the bottle and a main print area of 22.78cm x 13.24cm The story line revolves around an outing that Freda has engineered in an effort to spend more time with Vittorio. Brenda wants no part of the outing or Freda's plan but the ever optimistic and slightly bullying Freda lives by the following philosophy: Freda had planned to visit a stately home in Hertfordshire, but Rossi instead decides to head for Windsor. The cars lose one another twice, but the two groups eventually visit Windsor Castle and St George's Chapel, before moving on to Windsor Great Park for a picnic. Later, Brenda and Freda argue, and Freda storms off into the bushes. Brenda eventually goes in search of her and finds her dead. She has no obvious injuries, and it is unclear exactly what has happened. Take a lesson from it then. It could happen to you. When I go I shall have my family about me – daughters – sons – my husband, grey and distinguished, dabbing a handkerchief to his lips…’ I don’t think the era of the book is directly named, but it seems like the 60s or early 70s. Freda and Brenda are modern women of a sort; Brenda has run away from her hard-drinking, middle-class farming husband, and Freda has no relations other than an elderly and judgemental aunt. They rely on themselves, and to some extent on each other - although they each display contempt for the other’s eccentricities and shortcomings. Neither can afford to live alone, yet their bedsit (and shared bed) cannot comfortably accommodate them both.It was unfair. She told her so. ‘I always wanted to live in a house with a big kitchen. I wanted a mother in a string vest and a pinny who made bread and dumpling stew.’