Winter Garden [Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Beryl Bainbridge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 30, 2002

Quiet and reliable, Douglas Ashburner has never been much of a womaniser. So when he begins an extra-marital affair with Nina, a bossy, temperamental artist with a penchant for risky sex, he finds adultery a terrible strain. He tells his wife that he needs a rest, so she happily packs him off for a fishing holiday in the Highlands. Only, unknown to her, Douglas is actually flying off to Moscow with Nina, as a guest of the Soviet Artists' Union. It is then that things begin to get very complicated indeed...

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Brilliant ... marvellous comedy ... a tour de force' OBSERVER 'A very funny as well as a frightening book' GUARDIAN 'Marvellously deft ... comedy is secreted everywhere, like honey; but it is a surreal little honeycomb, with sharp teeth' TLS --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Beryl Bainbridge is one of the greatest living novelists. Author of seventeen novels, two travel books and five plays for stage and television, she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, and has won many literary awards including the Whitbread Prize and the Author of the Year Award at the British Book Awards. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Soundings Ltd; Unabridged edition (July 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184283181X
• ISBN-13: 978-1842831816
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,703,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wickedly Clever, August 4, 2001

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Winter Garden (Hardcover)

Winter Garden, by Ms. Beryl Bainbridge is both an earlier work, and one of her novels I have most enjoyed. Best known for the historically based fiction she has been writing as of late, this work while taking part in a referenced period of recent history is not predicated on a given event.

This is a tale of deception and misdirection from the opening page. A group is making a trip to Brezhnevs Russia. The core is a group of artists who ostensibly are going to travel and meet with their peers in The Soviet Union. Guests are allowed and one is an Admiralty Lawyer who takes the trip to share the company of Nina, and not to Scotland to fish, as he would like those he has left behind to believe. All is well until they board their flight and trifles like seating arrangements emerge as problems. From this point on nothing is as it seems, and the truth is not revealed until presented literally in the closing sentences.

Between the first and final page Ms. Bainbridge assembles a plot worthy of the great Hitchcock himself. In some of her books the Author does not always immediately bring the interest of the reader to a high pitch. She does however keep the reader interested enough, so that as she proceeds bits and pieces are brought to notice, and the more carefully they are noted the faster the trapdoor she drops you through at the end is reached. However this is not to suggest that the fall you finally take is the only one you stand upon. Ms. Bainbridge is brilliant at letting you believe the obvious only to have it dashed as meaningless the solutions you anticipate.

I have read and commented upon most of this Authors work, and while not all are perfect, none disappoint, and all should appeal to a very wide audience.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A FRIGHTFUL LOAD OF OLD TOSH, September 3, 2008

By 

Barry McCanna (Normandy, France) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Winter Garden (Paperback)

I began reading this with high hopes, based on the extracts of reviews on the back cover which proclaimed "razor sharp", "very funny" and "marvellously deft", but my expectations were soon dashed. The scenario is promising and in the right hands could have been hilarious, but that is not how it pans out. There is virtually no background, and the characters are inadequately described for us to work up much enthusiasm about what happens to them. In fact the author's approach is quite undisciplined, as if it's too much trouble to set the thing down properly. There is no sense of tension or narrative thread, the plot (for want of a better expression) meanders about and loses itself, and turning the page becomes a chore. It was a blessed relief when the mass of loose ends finally overcame their creator, whose joy at producing the inconsequential end could not have surpassed my own at reaching it.

Just as a footnote, the book seems to lack careful editing and proof-reading. On page 5 the hero (sic) remembers his wife singing "The sun has put his hat on", which makes you wonder what parallel universe he (or rather the author) inhabits. On page 42 "Nina advised againt", on page 74 "He said deferntially...." and on page 152 "...strutting up and down in plimsols..." But maybe the people at Abacus couldn't be bothered either.