Shortlisted for the 1974 Booker Prize, and with a new introduction by A. K. Blakemore, a razor-sharp and mercilessly funny novel of friendship, class and desire. Freda and Brenda divide the bed they share with a barricade of books, then spend their days working side by side in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory. A picnic out at Windsor Park for the two women and their colleagues offers promise for Freda and terror for Brenda. Passions run high before coming to a brutal and startling end. With an unforgettably dark heart, The Bottle Factory Outing is laugh-out-loud funny, grubbily evocative and slyly weird, and is for fans of Muriel Spark, Anita Brookner and early Ian McEwan.