Description
Shortlisted for the 1974 Booker Prize, and with a new introduction by A. K. Blakemore, a razor-sharp and mercilessly funny novel of friendship, class and desire.
Freda and Brenda divide the bed they share with a barricade of books, then spend their days working side by side in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory. A picnic out at Windsor Park for the two women and their colleagues offers promise for Freda and terror for Brenda. Passions run high before coming, brutally, to a startling end. With an unforgettably dark heart, The Bottle Factory Outing is laugh-out-loud funny, grubbily evocative and slyly weird, and is for fans of Muriel Spark, Anita Brookner and early Ian McEwan.
‘Perhaps the purest distillation of her tragicomic style . . . What begins as a bleakly funny observation of workplace boredom soon descends into an off-beat, bungled nightmare involving a corpse.’ CRACK Magazine
‘One of the greatest novels of all time.’ Observer
‘Outrageously funny and horrifying.’ Graham Greene
‘Superb . . . vibrant . . . profoundly comic.’ The Times
‘Few writers offer more control and delight . . . It is a book everyone should read, not just because it is a wonderful work of art in itself, but because it says so much about our world.’ Guardian
‘Two very complex, funny female characters. They need each other although they would never admit it.’ Maxine Peake
Paperback
Publication: 12 Mar 2026, Daunt Books
ISBN: 9781917092371
Extent: 304 pages
