Beryl Bainbridge - The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress

this is london“Reminds readers what fiction is really for...” Hard-won and flawed in the writing it may have been but Beryl Bainbridge's last novel still sees the world with a fierce clarity that reminds her readers what fiction is really for: not fame, not prizes, but truth...

Daily Express“lfred Hitchcock would have had fun with this story...” We can only speculate what revisions Beryl might have made. Her tightly-knit prose has moments of memorable description and, like everything she wrote, the novel is spare with not a word wasted...

The List“A masterclass in confident prose...” Rose and Harold’s uneasy relationship is never satisfactorily developed, and many questions are left unanswered. But for simple elegance and foreboding ambience, this is a sign-off worthy of any author of Bainbridge’s generation...

Financial Times“Rrenews our sense of literature’s loss at Beryl Bainbridge’s death...” The uncertainty of the book’s final pages is strangely disquieting. The reader may want to retrace his or her steps in an attempt to discover just how culpable Rose is. The power of this remarkable short novel remains long after one has finished it

The Spectator“A terrific book, very funny but deeply haunting...” Beryl Bainbridge is an immortal and we are all the poorer for her going. But at least she leaves this last comic coda to her incomparably impressive oeuvre...

The Scotsman“In Bainbridge's novels there is always a lot going on below the surface...” The novel ends abruptly. It was not quite finished when Bainbridge died. In her last days she dictated some of the last pages. We can't be sure just how it would have been finished, Happily nobody has been invited to try to do so...

The Independent“Ranks among the finest of Bainbridge's fine works of fiction...” The Girl in the Polka-dot Dress reads like a summation of Beryl Bainbridge's art. It is carefully constructed, as always, but there is a sense in which the author is returning to her roots, using the rich material of her early life...

Guardian“Bainbridge at her dark and mysterious best...” The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress may not have every final i dotted and t crossed but, as most of Bainbridge's oeuvre did, it leaves its readers with more to think about than one might imagine possible for such a slender tale. It is a fitting finale...