Shortlisted for the Booker Prize Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize Freda and Brenda spend their days working in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory. A work outing offers promise for Freda and terror for Brenda; passions run high on that chilly day of freedom, and life after the outing never returns to normal. Beryl Bainbridge dazzles readers in this offbeat, haunting yet hilarious novel. 'An outrageously funny and horrifying novel' Graham Greene 'Superb... taut in construction, expansive in characterisation, vibrant in atmosphere and profoundly comic' The Times 'The masterful restraint of Beryl Bainbridge's sentences reveals an author in complete control of her artistry' Guardian