Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge (Sept 27)

[Susan]

Welcome to our Sept 27 buddy read of Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge first published in 1998



The Guardian ranked it her eighth best novel:

8 Master Georgie (1998)
The fifth of Bainbridge’s novels to be shortlisted for the Booker prize – “our table was always the most cheerful, because we didn’t expect to win” – was another based on historical events. She turned to these after she “used up”her life in her earlier autobiographical novels. A subtle book that rewards rereading, it’s set around the Crimean war, narrated in turn by the hangers-on of medic George Hardy. The story comes as a series of snapshot moments, as the characters hurtle toward disaster. “One should never underestimate the disruptive force of haphazard actions,” says one, and Bainbridge’s characters know all about those.

Sample line: “Some people only weep inside, which I think wasteful.”

Here's the blurb:

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 1998
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FICTION PRIZE
WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT MEMORIAL PRIZE FOR FICTION
WINNER OF THE WH SMITH BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD

When Master Georgie - George Hardy, surgeon and photographer - sets off from the cold squalor of Victorian Liverpool for the heat and glitter of the Bosphorus to offer his services in the Crimea, there straggles behind him a small caravan of devoted followers; Myrtle, his adoring adoptive sister; lapsed geologist Dr Potter; and photographer's assistant and sometime fire-eater Pompey Jones, all of them driven onwards through a rising tide of death and disease by a shared and mysterious guilt.

Combining a breathtaking eye for beauty with a visceral understanding of mortality, Beryl Bainbridge exposes her enigmatic hero as tenderly and unsparingly as she reveals the filth and misery of war, and creates a novel of luminous depth and extraordinary intensity.

Come and join us for the the last in our 2027 Bainbridge buddy reads.