In her novel The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge creates a remarkably surreal world out of a deceptively mundane situation. Brenda and Freda are two employees in a British factory that bottles bulk-imported wines, sherries and brandies. Owned by and largely staffed by Italians, the working environment seems to provide the author with a wealth of comic possibilities for the linguistic faux-pas or the cultural misunderstanding. The novel does have its share of both, but does not descend into the mere farce that over-use of such elements might produce.Freda and Brenda might work in the same factory, but their backgrounds and personalities are quite different. Neither is particularly glamorous, but then neither is, apparently, the working class life that they lead. But it still has to be lived. Perhaps paradoxically, perhaps comically, they dress garlic with lemon juice and garlic. Thus, like the rest of us, they have their pretensions. No working class comedy set in London would be worth its salt without an Irishman called Paddy, of course. In The Bottle Factory Outing he turns out to be a spare time plumber as well.The outing of the title eventually does come to pass, after riveting events such as a broken toilet flush. The trip is made in two cars and a packed lunch accompanies the group. There is a call, of course, for more remarkable salad dressing. The trip’s destination is Windsor, a good half an hour from London, where the tale and its characters are based. The group sets off to visit Windsor in all of its manifestations, from historic town to fortified castle, from chapel to Royal seat to safari park. The Ford Cortina has to be left at the entrance to the safari park, incidentally, in case the lions and tigers force entry via its sun roof. A Cortina with a sun roof? Now there’s living. The Mini has to make do.After encounters with an elephant in the children’s zoo, it’s time to lay out the spread and attack the salad dressing. Freda and Brenda suffer the attentions of the fellow-travelling males and various encounters ensue. The here and now mixes uncomfortably with aspiration and memory, and so tensions come and go with the farce as the group regroups around a nibbled lunch in the park. And then, the unimaginable happens.The trip back to London is thus rendered both comical and surreal. What happens stretches the imagination to the extreme and provides the reader with interesting ideas on how to use the left-over brandy after Christmas.The Bottle factory Outing is truly farcical, but the lives of these people are at the same time truly tragic. It’s not that they gloat over their misfortune, or even complain about it. But no matter what they do or how they approach the challenges of life, the mistakes always seem to reappear. They never make the continually imagined and planned visit the factory owner’s house in rural Berkshire. If they had done, they could have left him in the end with a real present. The book may now feel somewhat dated, which is strange because it was only written forty years ago. The feeling might be a result of the massive changes that have come about in working class life since then. Or perhaps it wasn’t really accurate even at the time… The British have never been comfortable with accuracy when describing the detail of the mundane, especially when that involves the depiction of working class life that has been conceived from another place.
Te Bottle Factory Outing is set in the early 1970s, and focuses on two young women who live and work together. Brenda is thin, dark and impossibly meek. She's afraid of almost everything, dreads making a fuss or drawing attention to herself and consequently frequently lets others walk all over her. Freda, by contrast, is big and brassy. She has little regard for others' sensibilities, though she has a kind heart underneath, and frequently fights Brenda's battles for her while completely dominating her herself.The pair work at a small wine-bottling factory, owned by an Italian immigrant, Mr Pagnotti, and populated almost entirely by first generation Italians who Mr Pagnotti brought over to Britain with him. Freda and Brenda are both a breath of fresh air and a worrying foreign element to their colleagues, who are both shocked and thrilled by Freda's free and easy attitudes, particularly to men and sex. She has her eye on the boss' nephew, Vittorio, and she won't take no for an answer.It is Freda who hatches a plan for the whole workforce to have a day out for a picnic and to see a stately home. She hopes it will give her time alone with Vittorio, though Brenda feels nervous about the whole excursion and would rather be allowed to stay at home. There's a sense of something bad looming on the horizon, and the reader is not surprised when events on the outing take a turn for the worse.I thoroughly enjoyed The Bottle Factory Outing, which showed off Bainbridge's huge skill in characterisation. Freda and Brenda were perfectly imagined, and I really felt I knew them and understood how they thought and felt about things. The 1970s setting too, was briliantly done, and I could almost see their seedy little room, a double bed in the corner with books down the middle to protect Brenda's delicate sensibilities. Bainbridge's humour is greatly in evidence, and there are numerous little incidents to raise a smile. The humour can get extremely dark at times, and by juxtaposing tragedy with the utterly ridiculous, Bainbridge sometimes leaves the reader feeling almost guilty for laughing. It was very cleverly done and I was glued to the pages to see how these characters were going to get out of the situation they found themselves in.I wasn't surprised to see that there's something of Bainbridge's own life and experiences in the novel, as she once worked in a similar bottle factory herself. There's an air of reality about the setting which speaks of genuine experience.
Do You like book The Bottle Factory Outing (1994)?
Awesome in that is confirms every stereotype I've ever held about Italians, the obese, and homely skinny women. (I rely on fictional novels to confirm all my stereotypes.) Also, the fat one dies on the bottle factory outing. Spoiler alert! Good fun, though, for reals.
—Ben Lee
A small man hugs a large lady and she falls over and breaks her neck. Then they put her in a wine barrel bound for Portugal. Weird.
—Saya Hashimoto
2009 bookcrossing:I had never heard of Beryl Bainbridge before I picked up this book. It says in the front that she was born in the 30s in Liverpool. This book was first written in the 70s. It is set in London and focuses on two women: the dramatic and well-built blonde Freda, and the skinny, mousey Brenda, who have haphazardly joined forces in life. They share a bedsit and bed and work at an Italian bottle factory. Freda is keen to seduce the Italian manager, and arranges a works outing for one Sunday. Brenda is dreading it because she is being persued by another of the Italian managers. The day trip doesn´t exactly go to plan and ends really quite grimly.The book really focuses in on the events and people´s conversations - I mean, time-wise this isn´t a long story. But this doesn´t make it boring or feel long and drawn out. It was a pretty addictive read: I finished it in a day. There are some fantastic characters in this book, and I would certainly try more of her work if I ever come across it.One of the minor characters really fascinated me - Brenda´s mad mother-in-law. Some of the little anecdotes about what she did were brilliant. I particularly liked the one about her sneaking out in the wee small hours, stealing the hens´eggs to draw faces on them before putting them back.
—Ape
