An entertaining and insightful observer of the human condition, Beryl Bainbridge is one of the most highly regarded fiction writers in Great Britain. She began her career with a series of blackly humorous, biting fictions depicting people of lowered expectations who snatch at love and find it always disappointing. These characters, like many people, cannot or will not see the truth, which becomes available only when filtered through the lens of the past or through the eyes of multiple characters. The characters' mostly lower-middle-class backgrounds prepare them for disappointment, but do not totally erase their penchant for romanticism and idealism, which serve as escapes from poverty and boredom. Her later novels focus on historical figures who have much in common with the people in her autobiographical fiction. Bainbridge's characters are often angry, eccentric, and adulterous. Some are even murderers, and few are likeable. But Bainbridge's open-eyed approach to...