{"product_id":"awfully-big-adventure-9781961341920-new","title":"An Awfully Big Adventure","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Pinteresque menace and Sparkian malice . . . A former actress herself, Ms. Bainbridge chronicles the backstage antics of her fictional theater company with knowing aplomb.\" --Michiko Kakutani, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA blackly comic story of the secrets, sex, and violence behind the curtain of a repertory theater's postwar production of \u003ci\u003ePeter Pan\u003c\/i\u003e: its \"close observation and hilarity are underlain by a sense of tragedy as deep as any in fiction.\" (\u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eLiverpool, 1950. Against the grimy backdrop of the gray postwar city, a shabby, scandal-steeped repertory theater company rehearses for their Christmas performance of Peter Pan. Treading the boards for the first time is sixteen-year-old Stella Bradshaw, ambitious, idealistic, and still overwhelmingly innocent. She falls hard for the rakish, monocled director, Meredith Potter, but, unable to attract his attentions--and not understanding why he's spending quite so much time with their male colleagues--she turns to another colleague to initiate her into the ways of love. Enter the celebrated P. L. O'Hara, a dashing leading man who's nursing secrets of his own. When the curtain is up, fantastical entertainment abounds, but backstage a very different drama is playing out: a pitch-black comedy of indiscretion, intrigue, and eventual tragedy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eShortlisted for the Booker Prize, and dusted with that magical \"air of Pinteresque menace and Sparkian malice [that] lingers around the margins of [all of Beryl Bainbridge's] fiction,\" (Michiko Kakutani, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e), \u003ci\u003eAn Awfully Big Adventure\u003c\/i\u003e is one of the author's very best--and best-loved--novels.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"MCNALLY ED","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":67650640740642,"sku":"9781961341920-new","price":18.13,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0893\/4755\/5618\/files\/9781961341920.jpg?v=1793363774","url":"https:\/\/www.albakireads.com\/products\/awfully-big-adventure-9781961341920-new","provider":"AlbakiReads","version":"1.0","type":"link"}