Another Part of the Wood

by Beryl Bainbridge, Lynn Barber (Foreword)

Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling. Joseph decides to take his mistress and son, together with a few friends, to stay in a cabin in deepest Wales for the weekend - with absolutely disastrous results. Beryl Bainbridge's gift for deadpan dialogue and spare narrative, and her darkly comic vision of the world, are all in evidence in this early novel.

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Historical Fiction, Ebooks, Literature, Classics, 20th Century

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge DBE was an English writer from Liverpool. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often set among the English working classes. Bainbridge won the Whitbread Award twice and was nominated for the Booker Prize five times. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Bainbridge among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Reviews

[Aravind P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine the whole world with its diversity shrunk into a cottage in woods. It is like a society surviving on a tight rope. The ego, insecurity and loneliness boil beneath the masks of bourgeoisie society. The emotions finally give away to the burden of the masks culminating in calamities. Beryl's characters were impeccable, plucked from diverse strata of the society.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oddball characters thrown together in rustic setting. Like other Bainbridge novels I've read, the characters seem unable to communicate and understand each other. There's some humor here, though not as whimsical as her other books. A good read with some surprises. Bainbridge's writing is excellent as always.

[Tonya · Rating 1 out of 5]

The entire book comes together in the last sentence which was very frustrating! I felt the story should have really begun when it was over. The writing was average and the plot lacking. If you want my opinion, give it a miss.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I generally love everything written by Beryl Bainbridge and this was an interesting short piece which both unnerves and unsettles the reader by building up an aura of menace amongst this group of characters.

Thrown together in the 60's, this group of misfit friends (some with partners, children and even a delinquent friend) meet in the Welsh hills for a short holiday spent in forestry cottages under very basic conditions.

As the characters interact more and more this story felt like it was bordering on an edge not dissimilar to Lord of the Flies with hinted at menace and darkness within. Once the characters get bored of playing Monopoly and being civil with each other then they really start to unravel.

BB's traditionally simple and hugely direct prose is always strangely hypnotic to me and totally absorbing.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A motley group -- two couples, a kid, a special-needs obesity case, a couple on-site hands -- roughs it together (well there are cabins) on holiday in the Welsh woods. But as the cold winds blow and an evasive bottle of meds goes rogue, everything falls apart. This is all likely an elusive allegory (key characters are named Balfour, Gosling, and Roland), and even with the hair-raising descent into misanthropy and spite, there's something very structurally satisfying about the novel. In particular, a Monopoly board is put out for a game twice, and Bainbridge is very deft in detailing how metal pieces are assigned, where dice are rolled, and who's paying attention. I suspect she was the only writer anywhere who could make a board game come alive in fiction. Hell, even the one-sentence first paragraph ("Balfour, unbearably shy, was waiting for them.") is given symmetric force by the similar final sentence (don't tempt yourself, just wait for it).

Inspirational moment: "People changed and in changing affected others, were affected in their turn, a continual process of addition and subtraction. Cut the communication lines and contact was broken, no information could come through. If the breach was serious enough, the lapse of time long enough, one could be fired upon by one's own guns."

[Vickey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spiteful, damaged people decide to holiday in the Welsh countryside. They do not enjoy themselves.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Abigails Party in a hut in a field, with an even more tragic ending.

[Sarah Loh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really sure what to make of this book. Characters were unlikeable, writing was good though.

[🐴 🍖]

ya so this whips. likely woulda dug no matter what, being a sucker for "ppl go to the woods & stuff goes real bad wrong" narratives, but what makes this a special treat is all of the psychological mousetraps & heated doorknobs & swinging paint cans that the story is riddled with: it could have ended like 128 different ways, all of them nightmarish. best use of monopoly for dramatic tension since that one sopranos ep. (n.b. this review pertains to the 1979 rewritten version; q for any berylheads, is the orig 1968 novel substantially different / worth reading for comparison's sake? lmk pls)

[RedSaab · Rating 2 out of 5]

Take a clutch of disparate characters out of their usual comfort zones, plant them in a primitive woodland camp for an uncomfortably long weekend, and watch as their foibles and vulnerabilities collide and interweave with predictably dire consequences. The suspense of the book lies in not knowing quite which consequences, although Bainbridge quickly sets several hares running.

Set in the early Swinging Sixties, the permissive zeitgeist has clearly not yet impinged upon Bainbridge's odd cast, who mostly seem like relics from an earlier much more buttoned-up period. Yet this is a timeless tale of human alienation and dysfunctional dynamics, packed into a short spare narrative whose atmosphere exudes dull menace from the outset. I was fleetingly reminded Abigail's Party but without the laughs, and Lord of the Flies but without the overt savagery. The fateful and clearly telegraphed denouement creeps up on characters too self-absorbed to react to what is really going on, and so avert tragedy.

A tale with a shockingly abrupt end, but disappointingly without any endgame. I wanted Bainbridge to continue for at least another 24 hours, unpicking all the recriminations and repercussions which would surely have ensued. But no, she simply puts down her pen.

There's no doubting the power of the author's sparse style, but some of the characterisations are equally sparse, which makes them an oddly unsympatheic bunch to relate to. For me, a strange and disconcerting read, and ultimately a dissatisfying one.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beryl Bainbridge's second novel and it continues the mood of the first by throwing a bunch of weirdos - although the type of weirdos we would recognise, perhaps even in ourselves - together into a closed situation at the foot of a Welsh mountain. Again, the action takes places in the late sixties so some people are more up for the changing times than others and the addition of an adolescent with learning disabilities provides a feint linkage to The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner.

Mike Leigh's Nuts in May would be another comparison although the humour is far darker and the ending is horrific. We see it coming and indeed, the dust jacket proclaims that something bad will happen - but we are not sure what form it will take and who will be the first to bite the dust, Scooby-Doo style.

The novel features a game of Monopoly and all the irritation that comes with that - a microcosm of society where all the winner needs to do is to go all out in their own interest as others will be only playing half-heartedly.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know what to make of this book. It's bleak, depressing, oppressive, but also compelling. The author scrutinizes everyone under a microscope, and exposes their (and our) small repulsive human inadequacies and pettiness. I'm filled with questions and wish I had to read it for a class where we could all sit around and discuss it. The only person whose inner life isn't revealed--why is he here? Is there any redeemable character? Is love real and can anyone feel it? The father is totally impatient, never carries through on anything, and brings about the book's central tragedy because of his own short-sighted narrow mindedness and self-absorption, but does he deserve the final horror that occurs?

[Surreysmum · Rating 3 out of 5]

This gallery of characters are very well-depicted, with original and telling quirks, and none of them is particularly sympathetic (you get the impression that's not exactly on the author's list of priorities). With the combination of fractured and broken personalities, something awful is bound to happen sooner or later, and it is the innocent youngster who takes the brunt of it - on the very last page.

Not recommended for readers in a depressed or highly cynical mood, but certainly very accomplished.

[Christel · Rating 2 out of 5]

A group of strange people - some of them barely know each other - others hate each other - holiday together in unglamourous surroundings in Wales. A lot of unexplained and unspoken irritations. Relationships are not what they seem of should be. Who is the strange boy Kidney and why did they bring him? Guilt? The little boy is left to fend for himself with disastrous consequences.
Everything simmers until the dramatic end and then you have to imagine what happend next.

[Nadyne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book boring... I thought all the characters were awful and I never once got interested in what woulld happen to them, although I knew from the start that something dreadful would happen. And it did, but only on the last page, and then it was mentioned, and that was it.
Not for me, this one.

[Ela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fast paced story following two disfunctional couples during a camping holiday.

I was never bored and their was a Gatsby-esque sense of tragedy which I loved.

Revision 2 months later:

I've decided to demote this book to three stars because I didn't read it that long ago and all I can remember is a vague feeling of satisfaction: not memorable enough to deserve four stars.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phew, what a thriller. this book is about damaged people. The impact of selfishness, cruelty, deprivation of love and acceptance and kindness.
Some of the personalities drive you bonkers. How do the wheels turn for the cruel, selfish ones and the mistreated..........................

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chilling yet funny portrait of cruelty and loyalty in relationships.

[Elisabeth]

I did not know characters as the ones in the book existed. utterly strange

[David Ayres · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bunch of people visit a Welsh campsite in the late 1960's. None of them are particulary pleasant characters. Despite this it is a compelling read.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Childe Rowland to the dark tower came.
His word was still “Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man.”

—  ‘King Lear’, Act III, scene 4

Flintshire, the late sixties: a poorly integrated group of acquaintances made up of inadequates, fantasists and oddballs make their way to a rudimentary camp consisting of wooden huts among wooded hills and coombes.

There are singletons, mismatched couples, a couple of locals, and even a child. Into this mélange, largely isolated from the world but not from each other, disparate personalities and their idiosyncrasies start to generate friction, exacerbate personal frailties, and widen chasms in relationships.

And meanwhile poor provisioning, unsuitable clothing and primitive conditions underscore how irresponsible pretty much all the self-centred adults are, especially when a child’s wellbeing is at stake. Camp MacFarley acts like the board in a game of Monopoly in which, perversely, all the players are losers.

The holiday getaway, normally run by an experienced couple, is temporarily being looked after by their lanky son George – a giant of a man, currently obsessed with, and sensitive about, Israel (which we know had just survived the Six Day War) – plus a local volunteer, the intensely shy but unwell Balfour. George’s friend Joseph is a college administrator in London: divorced from his wife, he has brought his young child Roland on this Welsh break, along with his current squeeze Dotty, and a young man he calls Kidney who would now be classed as having special educational needs and disabilities but whom Joseph has somehow ‘adopted’ as his pet human project and his supposed contribution to society.

To compound matters Joseph has also invited an older married couple to stay: Lionel and May have come through the war to their middle age in something rather less than nuptial bliss, and to say something is really amiss would be an understatement, for theirs is clearly a dysfunctional relationship. And, hovering in the background, we mustn’t forget the older Willie, a retired miner who sometimes helps out at Camp MacFarley; among a bunch of such selfish and self-obsessed visitors he has a difficult task to bring his bland and easy-going nature to the fore.

This early fiction by Bainbridge, full of contemporary references to popular culture and political scandals, was revised a few years later to better reflect the impact of her narrative. It forensically portrays an unlikely coming together of misfits; bringing their personal egos, hang-ups and baggage to an out-of-the-way, makeshift camp in northeast Wales they soon find that a change of scenery doesn’t make individual problems go away but instead inflates them. Whoever knew?

Bainbridge depicts most of her characters as vulnerable and not entirely unsympathetic individuals, but just as soon as the reader may start to like any one of them they are likely to reveal the less pleasant side of their nature. The innocent in all of this is Roland, brought here by his neglectful father Joseph on the dangled promise of a trek up a mountain, somewhat like Denbighshire’s Castell Dinas Brân, to visit its ruined towers.

In many ways this tense and engrossing novella, which somehow disorientates the reader by flitting from one individual consciousness to another, reminds me of the only other Bainbridge novel I’ve so far read, Every Man for Himself which is set on the Titanic during its fated maiden voyage in 1912. In both stories we meet a group of people, strangers as well as acquaintances, all needing to try to get along in a closed environment; but inherent niggles and escalating tensions both indicate and prefigure the tragedy that will slowly but surely come about.

So, for example, the localised fire in another part of the wood which had to be attended to early on in the narrative would be a harbinger of the psychological conflagrations and tragic outcomes that would eventually overwhelm the temporary residents of Camp Misfit. We can’t say we couldn’t see it coming.

Set during a period when fashions and attitudes were rapidly changing, Another Part of the Wood – which in itself has the nature of a stage direction – nevertheless retains the timeless quality of a Shakespearean tragedy, especially with a mangled synopsis of the plot of King Lear told to Roland, its echoes of when “Childe Rowland to the dark tower came,” and the knowledge that the play ends with the death of the innocent daughter Cordelia. It’s a haunting novella which has the power to seep into one’s subconscious.

[Luceene · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because it's from the 60s (which i love) and the Penguin decades edition is a thing of art. After the first third i really couldn't stand this book, the writing was great, but i either hated or pitied all the characters, which together with the lonely woods setting, made it feel altogether too depressing. I kept thinking i would put it down at some point and read something less gloomy to break the desolation, but i couldn't stop reading, and although repulsed by almost everyone, and the only action being a game of monopoly, it was mildly addictive. i'm still not sure what to make of it, the last page threw me a bit (it was devastating), but the book needed it. 3* for the writing, cover art and readability, but i will never read this again.

[Esmeralda Hendrix · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enerzijds: bijna theatraal als je het boek leest. Er gebeurt weinig (geen actie) maar de figuranten, onderlinge interacties en hun gedachtengang heeft ze in woorden kunnen vangen. Zou daarom meer van haar willen lezen.


Anderzijds: ligt de focus niet op actie. Dus je leest over een groep mensen in het bos in een hut. En ze spelen monopolie (heel kort gezegd). In alles merk je wel dat het een verhaal is met een duister plot, maar die ontplooiing verloopt op zijn zachts gezegd traag. Dat is in dit geval onderdeel van de opzet en haar focus op de figuranten. Maar daardoor werd het voor mij ook een worsteling om te blijven lezen.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intensive character-study of a certain element of 1960s Britain, when the country was coming to terms with the post-war world's final death throes...as a wave of new ideas & the new social breakdown takes hold of two families & assorted odd-balls on a rustic holiday in north Wales. Beryl Bainbridge handled these forces with an admirable restraint...leaving the final sad events as testament to a society struggling to cope with an era of rapid change. The bewilderment is paramount, a feeling of utter confusion at the relentless despair of ordinary lives.

[Jill Flanagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beryl Bainbridge is a name that’s fun to say and a master of a genre I described to my mother as the British “cozy-miserable”.
This novel though, i ultimately struggled with it a bit even though I enjoyed it and was affected by it, it did seem like there was a rush to judgement or something by the end or that Bainbridge realized that all the various pieces didn’t fit.
One the main issues for me is the character of Balfour who never really felt fleshed out which was surprising as the other characters were well-drawn. Thus his final revelation of emptiness didn’t have as much impact.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

The scene setting and descriptions of the characters worked really well. The first game of monopoly was punctuated with some hilarious one-liners. Then the story sort of lost its way. I think Bainbridge knew what she wanted the ending to be and had to add some filler to actually get to it. Enjoyable for her witty prose but not as much substance as I was hoping.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a difficult read. A collection of unsympathetic and dysfunctional characters brought together in a rural setting with a vague atmosphere of menace. Feels like a Mike Leigh movie but without any redeeming charm or quirkiness to the characters. It does build towards a terrible climax at the end.

[Sue · Rating 1 out of 5]

Life is too short to finish this book. When I opened my Goodreads app to record this the quote was Frank Zappa: "So many books, so little time." So it's better to move on to a book I will enjoy!

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel has all the trademark Bainbridge darkness and wit. It is short but packs a punch. Another winner.

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars