'One of the funniest books I have ever read.' Hilary Mantel Seventeen-year-old Alan can't stand rows. And although the Second World War has ended, peace only hangs by a thread at home: his troublesome sister Madge creeps off for night-time liaisons with a German POW, and while their ineffectual father - broken by the hardships of war and an unhappy marriage - can't put food on the table, their mother pursues her escapist fantasies in romantic novels and love affairs. As the family heads inexorably towards disaster, obedient, faithful Alan, the focus of their jibes and resentment, is trapped in the middle of them all. Beryl Bainbridge's classic early novel is a vintage story of English domestic life, laced with sadness, irony and wicked black humour.

Beryl Bainbridge was the author of seventeen novels, two travel books and five plays for stage and televi­sion. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, and among other awards, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whit­bread Novel of the Year and the Guardian Fiction Prize. She died in 2010.