LoveReading Says
Voted the winner of the Man Booker Best of Beryl.
A novel about one family's experiences in the Crimean War. When the Battle of Inkerman was over, five survivors were assembled in front of a camera. A sixth figure - Master Georgie - added symmetry to the group. In the distance a young woman circled round and round like a bird above a robbed nest. 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.
Beryl Bainbridge's last novel, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress will be published posthumously in June 2011.
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Master Georgie Synopsis
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: A masterwork of love, guilt, and friendship set in Victorian Liverpool and Eastern Europe during the Crimean War. Photography is the common thread weaving together three different points of view that span the years from 1846 to 1854. The first ';plate' opens with the account of Myrtle, a young orphan girl, as she is taking a photograph of her adoptive father, Mr. Hardy, who has just passed away in Liverpool. The sudden and unsavory circumstances of Mr. Hardy's death bind Myrtle and the other characters of this story together as history propels them toward the frontlines of the Crimean War. Myrtle's adoptive brother, George Hardy, or ';Master Georgie' as he is called, is an amateur photographer and handsome surgeon. When he heads east in 1854 to offer his medical services to the conflict raging between Russia and Turkeya war it seems England will inevitably enterMyrtle follows him, as does George's brother-in-law, a high-minded geologist named Dr. Potter. The group travels to Valetta, Malta, and Constantinople, then on to Varna, where George will be stationed. As the caravan proceeds, the group crosses paths with Pompey Jones, a street urchin, photographer's assistant, and sometimes fire breather, who is a dear friend of George's and was with him the day his father died. It soon becomes clear that George's affections are torn between Pompey and Myrtle. Dr. Potter, meanwhile, pines for the affections of his wife, who is hundreds of miles away. The conflicting emotions in the travelers' hearts are amplified by the misery, disease, and filth they must endureas well as the other, more unthinkable, horrors of war. A sparse yet vivid historical novel, Master Georgie delves into themes of distorted truth, the psychological effects of war, unrequited love, and the will to survive. Called ';a true novelist's novel' by the Guardian, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Beryl Bainbridge including rare images from the author's estate.
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