Book Review: "A Weekend with Claude" by Beryl Bainbridge

Yes I'm still reading Beryl Bainbridge novels and yes, I will continue to. Her style of being dark but witty at the same time seriously reminds me of other authors such as Yiyun Li, Eliza Clark and to some extent, Ottessa Moshfegh. There is something about novels that can keep a dark tone whilst also presenting us with bizarre situations and people that intrigues me. Keeping the realism whilst making everything seem to feel a bit wrong or 'off' is a key skill in writing that very few have and I have to say, Beryl Bainbridge deploys it so well in her novels. Let's now review A Weekend With Claude, a novel which again, has made me want to read more Beryl Bainbridge.

The novel begins with a framing story in which a couple visits Claude’s antique shop, situated in the barn of his countryside home. While inspecting a desk, the woman discovers a photograph and a letter dated 1960 in one of the drawers. The photograph, taken a few years prior, shows a group of people in the gardens of Claude’s house. Intrigued, the couple accepts Claude’s invitation to join him for coffee in the house, where he gradually reveals the identities and stories of the people in the photograph.

These individuals include Lily, Norman, Shebah, Edward, and Claude himself, along with his partner Julia. The weekend that brought them all together forms the basis of the narrative, with each character offering their own perspective on the events. You know that this is about to get really quite intense and yet, in a classic style of Beryl Bainbridge, the reader is made to feel as though they cannot look away.

Claude, the host of the weekend, is portrayed as a man bitter over his wife Sarah’s departure, which left him emotionally stranded. He now shares his life with Julia, a reserved and seemingly kind woman, though her role remains somewhat enigmatic. The weekend gathering was primarily arranged for Lily, Claude’s old friend, who has recently been abandoned by her lover Billie and is now pregnant. Unknown to Edward, another guest, Lily has secretly chosen him as the potential father figure for her child. This scheme is known to everyone at the gathering except Edward, adding an undercurrent of manipulation to the weekend.

Claude’s guests - Norman, an opportunistic and predatory man; Shebah, an ageing former actress; and Edward, a brooding figure distanced from the group both physically and emotionally - are each destroyed in some way when this opportunity to meet up comes along and they bring all the baggage with them. This is beginning to get very Brideshead in which characters often manipulate each other, or result to guilt-tripping people over participating or not participating in the high drama. Honestly, I enjoyed reading about each of their turbulent personalities.

Norman, referred to as "Victorian Norman" due to his old-fashioned attire, lives in the same house as Lily in Liverpool and claims to be her friend, though his behaviour is far from protective. Self-educated and working-class, he harbours a predatory nature, which manifests in his unwelcome advances toward Julia. Shebah serves as a maternal yet quarrelsome figure to Lily. Her once-glamorous appearance has faded, and she appears in the photograph with a bandage on her leg, the result of an air rifle accident during that fateful weekend.

Meanwhile, Edward, though unassuming at first glance, becomes an unwitting centre-piece in Lily’s plan to create a new life for herself and her unborn child. Honestly, each and every one of these characters is just as horrid as the last and that is why it is so interesting to read. You just want something to go wrong for them and thus, we keep reading.

Though this book lacks a hardcore plot, it is a better exploration of character and complex morality than many people like to admit. I have read some pretty nasty reviews about this book on the internet but I urge everyone to give this book a good go. It paints these portraits of highly unlikeable people, brings them together and allows them all to self-destruct in this small space, each manipulating the other in a weird abusive game. I honestly really enjoyed it.