Winter Garden

Rating:
Summary: Wickedly Clever
Review: 'Winter Garden', by Ms. Beryl Bainbridge is both an earlier work, and one of her novels I have most enjoyed. Best known for the historically based fiction she has been writing as of late, this work while taking part in a referenced period of recent history is not predicated on a given event.

This is a tale of deception and misdirection from the opening page. A group is making a trip to Brezhnev's Russia. The core is a group of artists who ostensibly are going to travel and meet with their peers in The Soviet Union. Guests are allowed and one is an Admiralty Lawyer who takes the trip to share the company of Nina, and not to Scotland to fish, as he would like those he has left behind to believe. All is well until they board their flight and trifles like seating arrangements emerge as problems. From this point on nothing is as it seems, and the truth is not revealed until presented literally in the closing sentences.

Between the first and final page Ms. Bainbridge assembles a plot worthy of the great Hitchcock himself. In some of her books the Author does not always immediately bring the interest of the reader to a high pitch. She does however keep the reader interested enough, so that as she proceeds bits and pieces are brought to notice, and the more carefully they are noted the faster the trapdoor she drops you through at the end is reached. However this is not to suggest that the fall you finally take is the only one you stand upon. Ms. Bainbridge is brilliant at letting you believe the obvious only to have it dashed as meaningless the solutions you anticipate.

I have read and commented upon most of this Author's work, and while not all are perfect, none disappoint, and all should appeal to a very wide audience.

Rating:
Summary: Wickedly Clever
Review: �Winter Garden�, by Ms. Beryl Bainbridge is both an earlier work, and one of her novels I have most enjoyed. Best known for the historically based fiction she has been writing as of late, this work while taking part in a referenced period of recent history is not predicated on a given event.

This is a tale of deception and misdirection from the opening page. A group is making a trip to Brezhnev�s Russia. The core is a group of artists who ostensibly are going to travel and meet with their peers in The Soviet Union. Guests are allowed and one is an Admiralty Lawyer who takes the trip to share the company of Nina, and not to Scotland to fish, as he would like those he has left behind to believe. All is well until they board their flight and trifles like seating arrangements emerge as problems. From this point on nothing is as it seems, and the truth is not revealed until presented literally in the closing sentences.

Between the first and final page Ms. Bainbridge assembles a plot worthy of the great Hitchcock himself. In some of her books the Author does not always immediately bring the interest of the reader to a high pitch. She does however keep the reader interested enough, so that as she proceeds bits and pieces are brought to notice, and the more carefully they are noted the faster the trapdoor she drops you through at the end is reached. However this is not to suggest that the fall you finally take is the only one you stand upon. Ms. Bainbridge is brilliant at letting you believe the obvious only to have it dashed as meaningless the solutions you anticipate.

I have read and commented upon most of this Author�s work, and while not all are perfect, none disappoint, and all should appeal to a very wide audience.