Reviews

• An interesting read with various narrators who share their version of life before and during war. A tale of passions of one sort or another and where they lead or rather drive us.

• Historic fiction requires exceptional skills to capture character as well as time and place. Beryl Bainbridge's Master Georgie certainly excels in this regard, reminding me of the skills of Hilary Mantel. The plight of a Crimean War surgeon comes alive in all its gore and misery and insanity. The tale is told through the eyes of the surgeon's brother-in-law, his off and on boyfriend and photographic assistant, and Myrtle, an orphan informally adopted by the family and mother of his children. The Crimean War offers a backdrop of incompetent diplomatic and military leadership dissolving into a nightmare of gore, horror, disease, dysentery, crime, and cruelty. Bainbridge captures the disorganized international disaster with many horrible bloody details, having her characters do the best they can to survive the catastrophe. Yet, Bainbridge captures more than just history, time, place, and character for her writing is poetic and her attention to detail is superb. Early in the novel, Myrtle cleans the dog hair off of a tiger skin rug and as she pulls the white dog hairs from the brush, they float like dandelion seed up the wind-draft of the staircase and nestle on the chandelier. It is such details that make the book beautiful and horrible at the same time. The pace of the book is excellent and she moves the reader from critical chapter to chapter in the lives of the main characters. I almost think she wrote too little in this book. I would have loved to have the book twice as long. The character of Pompey Jones, the bisexual street urchin, is fascinating and I wish Bainbridge had written a novel just for this self-aware, self-assured, character to follow Master Georgie. Bainbridge actually focuses much of the novel on the character of Myrtle, and we learn as much about her amazing strength of character as we do about that of her sometime lover George Hardy. Myrtle and Pompey are both orphans, street wise, highly intelligent, and are recognized for their strengths by the Hardy family. George Hardy is never fully explained and made visible to the viewer for his motives are somewhat hidden. As a homosexual or bisexual physician from an upper class home, it appears that his service in the Crimean is somewhat of a penance, a sacrifice, for his sexuality. He strives to be the perfect son to his father, mother, and siblings, yet the secret of his sexuality means that a critical part of him must be hidden from his family. George Hardy appears to sacrifice himself during the Crimean War due to his sexual orientation over which he has no control. In some ways this is also a study of gay guilt in the Victorian period and the mechanisms and strategies undertaken to atone for an unacceptable sexual orientation. George is contrasted with Pompey who seems much more at home with his bisexuality, recognizing it as more a part of himself and as an asset by which he can manipulate both men and women. The narrative of war is haunting, reminding me of the outstanding novels of Pat Barker about World War I. We read of handsome shirtless soldiers dying from eating unwashed cherries or horses bleeding to death while standing with bullet holes through their body. It is the third narrator, Dr. Potter, George's brother-in-law that offers unique looks at all the other characters. Potter is intellectual and foolish at the same time. He lacks practicality but his power of observation is evident. Overall the book is excellent, a post-modern masterpiece, telling a complex tale from multiple points of view but never giving the `definitive' story behind the story.

• My first Bainbridge. What a wonderful writer! Why did I wait so long to discover her! Rarely in a lifetime of reading have I been moved so by an English author.

• Perhaps I read without sufficient attention - I didn't initially realise that the narrator was changing persona in different chapters. There were subtle references to homosexuality mixed in with the war theme, so subtle that I had to re-read this short novel to sort everything out. However, I think Beryl Bainbridge has a masterly technique, and the ending really underlined the poignant irony of the whole story and its themes. A very highly regarded writer, I shall of her novels. This was a good, provoking start.

• Beryl Bainbridge (1932-2010) hailed from the same city as me, Liverpool. I didn’t know that until I read John Banville’s introduction to my edition of Master Georgie. And nor did my hubby, also from Liverpool. So it’s fair to say that Bainbridge isn’t feted as much in her home city as other Scouse writers such as Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale, Carla Lane, Roger McGough, Helen Forrester, Kevin Sampson or Jimmy McGovern. Odd, given that Liverpudlians generally take pride in their city’s cultural heritage (we even celebrate that Charles Dickens gave public readings in St George’s Hall) and especially because Bainbridge was shortlisted for the Booker prize five times, more than any other author before or since. Her shortlisted books were The Dressmaker (1973), The Bottle Factory (1974), An Awfully Big Adventure (1990), Every Man For Himself (1996), and Master Georgie (1998). None won*. But after her death in July 2010 the Booker organisers announced a special, posthumous “Best of Beryl” prize for the most popular book of the five in an online poll. The winner was Master Georgie. Banville, himself a Booker prize winner in 2005 with The Sea, notes that “Bainbridge was of the rueful opinion that most readers would need to read (Master Georgie) three times in order to crack its inner code.” This actually isn’t as onerous as it might sound because it’s short. I’ve read it only once so I won’t pretend I’ve “cracked” it. But I don’t think of a book as a cipher to be decoded, more like a new acquaintance that might turn into an old friend. The story begins in the slums of Liverpool in 1846 and ends in 1854 on the battlefields of the Crimea. Master Georgie of the title is doctor and amateur photographer George Hardy, wealthy, attractive, bi-sexual, egoistical and nihilistic. The tale is narrated in turns by three other characters: Myrtle, an orphan who George plucks from the slums as a child and who dotes on him; Dr Potter, his pompous, intellectual, brother-in-law; and Pompey Jones, an enterprising urchin who learns photography from Hardy. Photography plays a significant role throughout. Each of the six chapters takes its name from a photograph taken in the course of the action; and the photographs and their names serve as a comment on the action. (In the final one, “Smile, boys, smile,” being one solder too few to achieve the desired composition a photographer has a group of battle survivors pose with a propped up corpse.) Master Georgie is surreal, absurd, touching, funny, macabre, and entertaining. And yet it’s also...somehow...unsatisfying? Like hearing a joke that has everyone wetting themselves with laughter but I don’t understand the punch-line. I don’t quite ‘get’ it. Perhaps, after all, that was Bainbridge’s point, and the true measure of it’s worth. Note to self: re-read. It takes a long time to grow an old friend. *** Highly recommended *The Booker winners in those years Bainbridge was shortlisted were: 1973 – The Siege of Krishnapur by J G Farrell 1974 – The Conservationist by Nadine Gorman and Holiday by Stanley Middleton

Purchase links