SOURCE: “Before the Deluge,” in New Statesman, September 13, 1996, p. 46.

In the following review, Cooke offers favorable assessment of Every Man for Himself.

“Though not vain, I'm aware that my outward appearance raises expectations.” Thus 22-year-old Morgan, narrator of Beryl Bainbridge's novel: a gilded youth aspiring to significance, a romantic, hopeless with girls, a Wooster looking for a Jeeves. His uncle owns the shipping line shortly to launch the miracle of the age, the unsinkable Titanic.

On 8 August 1912 Morgan travels to Southampton to join his chums for the maiden voyage. Melchett and Van Hopper complain they wasted three hours waiting for him to turn up at the Café Royal. A baronet's daughter flirts with him. Wallis Ellery, “clever and absolutely unobtainable”, begins to obsess him. His range of acquaintances broadens to include Rosenfelder, a Liverpool tailor; a deserted chanteuse, Adele, intent on rebuilding her career in the States; the...