SOURCE: “With Poison Pen in Hand,” in Women's Review of Books, Vol. VIII, Nos. 10-11, July, 1991, p. 37.

In the following review, Prose defends Bainbridge's work against demeaning critics and offers praise for An Awfully Big Adventure.

Traditionally, the back of the book jacket is the venue for quotes from past reviews and blurbs conveying fevered, near-hysterical praise. Yet some of the praise accompanying the British novelist Beryl Bainbridge's new book, An Awfully Big Adventure, strikes one as curiously diminutive and puzzlingly restrained. New York Times Book Review calls Bainbridge “a dazzling miniaturist” while the Times Literary Supplement rather poignantly expresses its regret that “we cannot, on Oriental lines, designate Miss Bainbridge a Minor [sic] National Treasure.”

Given the considerable virtues of An Awfully Big Adventure, and of Bainbridge's thirteen previous books of fiction, it does make one wonder, if not exactly for the first time: Who precisely is...