The acclaimed British novelist Beryl Bainbridge, an acute and acerbic chronicler of human relationships, has died at the age of 75. Ed Wilson, of her literary agency Johnson and Alcock, says Bainbridge died in a London hospital on early Friday. She had been suffering from cancer.
Bainbridge was born in the port city of Liverpool in northwest England in 1934, and the city’s grit informed her books, which blended humour, tragedy and the absurd.
She published more than a dozen novels, including A Weekend With Claud, The Bottle Factory Outing and Injury Time. Several drew on Bainbridge’s own experiences.
Her early career as an actress in provincial theatre provided the setting for An Awfully Big Adventure, published in 1989 and made into a 1995 movie starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant. —AP