Book Review: "Harriet Said..." by Beryl Bainbridge

I started my Beryl Bainbridge journey this year with a book entitled A Quiet Life and yet, I did begin unsure. After a while, I saw Bainbridge could be witty, write beautifully and grow a story of one character so much that the reader is immersed in learning about them. But when I read Harriet Said... it wasn't like that at all. This book is scary, creepy and reads almost dangerously - as if the reader is reading something they're not really supposed to know. It's a completely different novel and yet, it is just as good - if not better. It reminds me of The Book of Goose by Yiyun Lee, but it goes much, much further into the darkness of power dynamics.

The story begins with the unnamed teenage narrator returning home to her sleepy seaside village after a term away at boarding school. Isolated and bored, she eagerly reunites with her best friend Harriet, a confident and slightly older girl with a dominant personality. Their reunion is intense, as they quickly fall back into their shared world of secrecy, private rules, and a skewed moral perspective. The narrator adores Harriet but is also intimidated by her manipulative intelligence, seeing her as a leader she must follow.

Harriet reasserts her control over their friendship, setting rules for their interactions and behaviour. One of these involves the narrator maintaining a diary of their activities, in which she is instructed to record events objectively. Harriet insists that the diary is not for sentimental reasons but to document their experiences for future reflection. The narrator, despite feeling uncomfortable with some of Harriet’s demands, complies out of fear of losing her approval and their shared experience. This makes me think of those books from the 1970s where the girl turned out to be a sociopathic type - someone who upholds the power dynamic very purposefully.

The girls, bored and searching for excitement, begin spying on Mr. Biggs, a middle-aged man living a seemingly mundane life in the village. A soft-spoken, awkward figure, he is married to a loud and domineering wife. Harriet and the narrator initially regard him with derision, seeing him as pitiable and weak. However, Harriet soon suggests making him the subject of a game, one where they explore their growing awareness of adult relationships by manipulating his emotions. This is where the book starts to get really weird and also begins to remind me more of The Book of Goose. Even though Yiyun Li's book was meant to be funny and this book clearly is not funny at all, there is a shared darkness about them as they start to knowingly manipulate the adults around them. It's a very Salem-Witch atmosphere.

Harriet’s plan begins to take shape. She decides they will toy with Mr. Biggs’s affections, pulling him in with flirtation and then emotionally pushing him away. For Harriet, this is not just a game but an experiment to test their power over adults. The narrator feels a growing unease but is swept up in Harriet’s confidence and the promise of adventure. The narrator writes about these plans in the diary, recording their intentions and Harriet’s strategies with growing apprehension.

The girls make their first direct moves on Mr. Biggs, positioning themselves as innocent but curious teenagers. They strike up casual conversations with him, ensuring their behaviour appears natural to any onlookers. As their interactions continue, Harriet escalates the game, introducing subtle elements of flirtation that confuse and entice Mr. Biggs. He, lonely and unfulfilled in his marriage, begins to show signs of interest in the girls, especially Harriet. And this is probably where I'm going to stop explaining what happens because it gets rather disturbing. Beryl Bainbridge creates an amazing mood of realism, whilst also maintaining that 'gosh, this cannot be happening' atmosphere that the reader responds to with fear. As the book continues, this does not stop at any time.

All in all, I thought this book was great because it really gave me a different perspective on Beryl Bainbridge's works. It showed me that this woman can write in a number of different genres, but it also revealed that Bainbridge's want to convey all the difficulties of human experience is perhaps one of the things she does best. This book is truly terrifying - it will make your skin crawl.