Bainbridge's swift, economical novels tell us more about an era and the ways in which its people inhabit it than volumes of social history. For the four fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, the Titanic sails towards New York, glittering with luxury. The book is nearly over before disaster strikes, but once again, the unnerving details seem just right: the careless self-confidence at the beginning, the gallantry quickly eroding to panic. In a few deft strokes Bainbridge shows the gulf between the steerage passengers and the ''nobs'' while communicating the alternating servility and resentment of the crew. Once aboard, he drinks too much with his layabout friends sees people like the Astors and Strauses becomes infatuated with a girl who in turn falls for a mysterious and cynical stranger and gets to know a young Jewish dress designer who is hoping to become a hit in New York. This is a fictionalized account of the sinking of the Titanic, originally published in 1996 and now reissued, as have been so many other. Pierpont Morgan, who in search of something to do has had a slight hand in the ship's design (''the specifications of bathtubs''). With Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc, Nathalie Baye, Roland Amstutz. The story is told by a wealthy young American man-about-town, an adopted nephew of J. Every Man for Himself: Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. As Bainbridge admirers might expect, it is not the kind of version that would make a spectacular movie rather, it is a meticulously observed account that almost offhandedly convinces the reader that this is exactly what it must have been like aboard the doomed liner.

Every Man for Himself A Novel by Hopkins Moorhouse. Bainbridge, whose The Birthday Boys was an unforgettable rendition of Scott's fatal Antarctic expedition, has turned to another Edwardian tragedy for her new novel: the sinking of the Titanic. Every Man for Himself by Hopkins Moorhouse, 1920, The Musson Book Co., Ltd.

Every man for himself book