SOURCE: “Briefly Noted,” in Belles Lettres, Vol. 7, No. 1, Fall, 1991, p. 54.

In the following review, Schaumburger offers praise for An Awfully Big Adventure.

If you can imagine a coming-of-age novel set in post-war Liverpool that trespasses on the macabre and metaphysical terrain of Penelope Fitzgerald and Muriel Spark, with a bow to Alfred Hitchcock and Graham Greene, then you will have some notion of Beryl Bainbridge's latest novel An Awfully Big Adventure. Despite these influences, it is still a unique work, wry and disturbing in its own way. The plot centers around the experiences of an insecure, unflinching young woman who never fails to give the world a hard stare as she bumps into some complex aspects of life, such as love and death, during her apprenticeship to a seedy theater company. The twists and turns of backstage intrigue are juxtaposed to the equally odd rooming-house milieu of Stella's...