"Harriet Said" by Beryl Bainbridge

 A loss of innocence story. The thirteen year old narrator and her fourteen year old best friend, the manipulative Harriet, are newly pubescent and full of hormones and ignorance, doing whatever they can to meet men. In particular, the narrator targets an old married man.

The story is set in Formby, a coastal town, in the aftermath of the second world war. It's the summer holidays and beautiful weather. The weather, the landscape, the growing of fruit, and a funfair are all used to describe sex without describing sex; it is a masterclass in innuendo:

• "I stared at the poppies by the fence, the stiff hairy stems that wavered when the flowers burst. In bud they stood fierce and firm; once wanton in the sun they flowered and grew weak." (Ch 6)
• "Never again ... to sit in the garden peacefully waiting for the apples to ripen and summer to bloom." (Ch 6)
• "The stuffy green of the tomato plants, the bursting splitting red of the fruit" (Ch 6)
• "Small gusts of wind eddied down the field; the air was filled wit sharp intakes of breath; children and girls screamed uniformly, clinging to the striped poles of roundabouts, spinning round and round on painted horses." (Ch 7)
• "He went on all fours up the face of the dune, his hands reaching out to grasp wildly at the tufts of grass that grew in the sand ... the mouth of the world opened and the rough tongue of the sea licked the shore and tried to suck us down into the depths." (Ch 14

Other selected quotes:

• "'Never remember', he bade me. 'It's too boring'." (Ch 3)
• "You see it in the summer always when men open their shirts, and they're grey underneath." (Ch 5)
• "We both tried very hard to give our parents love, and security, but they were too demanding." (Ch 5)
• "I tried to think what innocence meant and failed." (Ch 6)
• "Adolescent tremblings, swerves of nerves gone gold. The pain of the moment, the awful uncontrolled joy; that was innocence." (Ch 6)
• "Orange girls and soldier boys pairing off slowly to drift to the far end of the field and struggle under the hedges filled with blackberries." (Ch 7)
• "Smearing mouths together in the rain." (Ch 7)
• "The scene on the couch had shown the unimaginable to be pitiful; a function as empty of dignity and significance as brushing one's teeth." (Ch 9)

A beautifully written book. It is like an impressionist painting. No form is ever clearly delineated, nothing is ever fully explained, so that you get the feeling of the atmosphere, and the mystery adds to the experience. Even the narrator is unnamed. The story is carried by the descriptions of tangential details, a bit like seeing things out of the corner of your eyes, which parallels the narrator who never quite understands what is happening. 

May 2022; 152 pages

Beryl Bainbridge is author of a number of novels, those reviewed in this blog have links.

• A Weekend with Claude (1967)
• Another Part of the Wood (1968, revised 1979)
• Harriet Said... (1972)
• The Dressmaker (1973) – shortlisted for Booker Prize
• The Bottle Factory Outing (1974) – shortlisted for Booker Prize, won the Guardian Fiction Prize
• Sweet William (1975)
• A Quiet Life (1976)
• Injury Time (1977) - winner, Whitbread Prize
• Young Adolf (1978)
• Another Part of the Wood (revised edn) (1979)
• Winter Garden (1980)
• Watson's Apology (1984)
• Filthy Lucre (1986)
• An Awfully Big Adventure (1989) – shortlisted for Booker Prize
• The Birthday Boys (1991)
• Every Man for Himself (1996) – shortlisted for Booker Prize, winner of the Whitbread Prize
• Master Georgie (1998) – shortlisted for Booker Prize
• According to Queeney (2001)
• The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress (2011)

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God