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The Yips
by Nicola BarkerThe hilarious Man Booker-longlisted novel from the author of ‘Darkmans’ and ‘The Burley Cross Postbox Theft’.
Another World
by Pat BarkerIn Pat Barker's Another World, the First World War casts its shadow down the generations.At 101 years old, Geordie, a proud Somme veteran, lingers painfully through the days before his death. His grandson Nick is anguished to see this once-resilient man haunted by the ghosts of the trenches and the horror surrounding his brother's death. But in Nick's family home the dark pressures of the past also encroach on the present. As he and his wife Fran try to unite their uneasy family of step- and half-siblings, the discovery of a sinister Victorian drawing reveals the murderous history of their house and casts a violent shadow on their lives...'Gripping in the best, most exquisite sense of the word - as if something wicked were holding you in its clutches' Mail on Sunday'Brilliant... without question the best novel I have read this year... once again, World War I extends its dark shadows across Pat Barker's extraordinary writing' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail'One of the best things she has ever done' Ruth Rendell'Utterly compelling... she is a novelist who probes deep, revealing what people prefer to keep hidden' Allan Massie, Scotsman'Demonstrates the extraordinary immediacy and vigour of expression we have come to expect from Barker . . . brilliant touches of observation, an unfailing ear for dialogue, a talent for imagery that is darting and brief but unfailingly apt... this is a novel that doesn't allow you to miss a sentence' Barry Unsworth, The New York Times Book Review'Intensely feeling... Geordie is a beautifully realised character, tough, humorous, and finally enigmatic' Helen Dunmore, The Times
Blow Your House Down (Virago Modern Classics #Vol. 415)
by Pat BarkerA serial killer stalks prostitutes with profound and unexpected consequences in this riveting novel from the Booker Prize-wining author of Ghost RoadA city and its people are in the grip of a killer who is roaming the northern city, singling out prostitutes. The face of his latest victim stares out from every newspaper and billboard, haunting the women who walk the streets. But life and work go on. Brenda, with three children, can't afford to give up while Audrey, now in her forties, desperately goes on 'working the cars'.And then, when another woman is savagely murdered, Jean, her lover, takes desperate measures...
Border Crossing: A Novel
by Pat BarkerBorder Crossing is Pat Barker's unflinching novel of darkness, evil and society.When Tom Seymour, a child psychologist, plunges into a river to save a young man from drowning, he unwittingly reopens a chapter from his past he'd hoped to forget. For Tom already knows Danny Miller. When Danny was ten Tom helped imprison him for the killing of an old woman. Now out of prison with a new identity, Danny has some questions - questions he thinks only Tom can answer. Reluctantly, Tom is drawn back into Danny's world - a place where the border between good and evil, innocence and guilt is blurred and confused. But when Danny's demands on Tom become extreme, Tom wonders whether he has crossed a line of his own - and in crossing it, can he ever go back?'Brilliantly crafted. Unflinching yet sensitive, this is a dark story expertly told' Daily Mail'A tremendous piece of writing, sad and terrifying. It keeps you reading, exhausted and blurry-eyed, until 2am' Independent on Sunday'Resolutely unsensational but disquieting . . . Barker probes not only the mysteries of 'evil' but society's horrified and incoherent response to it' Guardian'Rich, challenging, surprising, breathtaking' The Times
Double Vision: A Novel
by Pat BarkerDouble Vision is Pat Barker's thought-provoking Booker Prize-winning novel of modern warfare.Provocative, intense and deeply moving, Double Vision is a powerful story of one man's quest to find redemption amidst the horror of twenty-first-century war. Returning to Afghanistan after his photographer friend is killed by a sniper, war reporter Stephen Sharkey seeks release from his nightmares in an England seemingly at peace with itself.Questioning man's inhumanity to man both abroad and at home, and whether love really can be the great redeemer, Double Vision is a searing novel of conflict in modern times.'Full of brooding tension. Barker is one of our most significant contemporary novelists' Daily Telegraph'Barker writes superbly. The reader is drawn on, from page to page' Economist'Barker has a quite extraordinary ability to combine complexity and clarity and to make both seem parts of the same whole' Sunday Times'The characters grab hold at the beginning and never loosen their grip. Barker holds us by the sheer beauty of her writing' Financial TimesPat Barker was born in 1943. Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, comprising Regeneration, which has been filmed, The Eye in the Door, which won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize. The trilogy featured the Observer's 2012 list of the ten best historical novels. She is also the author of the more recent novels Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, Life Class, and Toby's Room. She lives in Durham.
The Eye in the Door: The Second Volume Of The Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration #2)
by Pat BarkerThe Eye in the Door is the second novel in Pat Barker's classic Regeneration trilogy.WINNER OF THE 1993 GUARDIAN FICTION PRIZE.London, 1918. Billy Prior is working for Intelligence in the Ministry of Munitions. But his private encounters with women and men - pacifists, objectors, homosexuals - conflict with his duties as a soldier, and it is not long before his sense of himself fragments and breaks down. Forced to consult the man who helped him before - army psychiatrist William Rivers - Prior must confront his inability to be the dutiful soldier his superiors wish him to be ...The Eye in the Door is a heart-rending study of the contradictions of war and of those forced to live through it.'A new vision of what the First World War did to human beings, male and female, soldiers and civilians'A. S. Byatt, Daily Telegraph'Every bit as waveringly intense and intelligent as its predecessor'Sunday Times'Startlingly original . . . spellbinding'Sunday Telegraph'Gripping, moving, profoundly intelligent . . . bursting with energy and darkly funny' Independent on SundayOther titles in the trilogy:RegenerationThe Ghost Road
The Ghost Road (Regeneration #3)
by Pat BarkerThe Ghost Road is the final instalment in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy.WINNER OF THE 1995 BOOKER PRIZE.1918, the closing months of the war. Army psychiatrist William Rivers is increasingly concerned for the men who have been in his care - particularly Billy Prior, who is about to return to combat in France with young poet Wilfred Owen. As Rivers tries to make sense of what, if anything, he has done to help these injured men, Prior and Owen await the final battles in a war that has decimated a generation ...The Ghost Road is the Booker Prize-winning account of the devastating final months of the First World War.'An extraordinary tour de force. I'm convinced that the trilogy will win recognition as one of the few real masterpieces of late twentieth-century British fiction' Jonathan Coe'Powerful, deeply moving' Barry Unsworth, Sunday Times'Harrowing, original, unforgettable' Independent'A triumph' Sunday TimesOther titles in the trilogy:RegenerationThe Eye in the Door
Life Class (Life Class Trilogy Ser. #2)
by Pat BarkerLife Class is the first novel in Pat Barker's Life Class Trilody - a powerful and unforgettable story of art and warSpring, 1914. The students at the Slade School of Art gather in Henry Tonks's studio for his life-drawing class. But for Paul Tarrant the class is troubling, underscoring his own uncertainty about making a mark on the world. When war breaks out and the army won't take Paul, he enlists in the Belgian Red Cross just as he and fellow student Elinor Brooke admit their feelings for one another. Amidst the devastation in Ypres, Paul comes to see the world anew - but have his experiences changed him completely?'Triumphant, shattering, inspiring'The Times'Barker writes as brilliantly as ever... with great tenderness and insight she conveys a wartime world turned upside down'Independent on Sunday'Vigorous, masterly, gripping'Penelope Lively, Independent'Extraordinarily powerful' Sunday TelegraphOther titles in the trilogy:Toby's RoomNoonday
Liza's England (Virago Modern Classics #42)
by Pat BarkerDauntless Liza Jarrett, born at the dawn of the twentieth century, is now in her eighties, frail and facing eviction with her cantankerous parrot Nelson, when she is visited by Stephen, a young gay social worker. As she learns to trust him, she recalls her life - her embittered, exhausted mother, her shell-shocked spiritualist husband, her beloved son and chaotic daugter. Their friendship, deepening with the unfolding of their stories, comes to sustain Liza through her last battle and brings new courage to Stephen.
Noonday (Life Class Trilogy Ser. #3)
by Pat BarkerIn Noonday, Pat Barker - the Man Booker-winning author of the definitive WWI trilogy, Regeneration - turns for the first time to WWII.'Afterwards, it was the horses she remembered, galloping towards them out of the orange-streaked darkness, their manes and tails on fire...'London, the Blitz, autumn 1940. As the bombs fall on the blacked-out city, ambulance driver Elinor Brooke races from bomb sites to hospitals trying to save the lives of injured survivors, working alongside former friend Kit Neville, while her husband Paul works as an air-raid warden. Once fellow students at the Slade School of Fine Art, before the First World War destroyed the hopes of their generation, they now find themselves caught in another war, this time at home. As the bombing intensifies, the constant risk of death makes all three of them reach out for quick consolation. Old loves and obsessions re-surface until Elinor is brought face to face with an almost impossible choice.Completing the story of Elinor Brooke, Paul Tarrant and Kit Neville, begun with Life Class and continued withToby's Room, Noonday is both a stand-alone novel and the climax of a trilogy. Writing about the Second World War for the first time, Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London into electrifying life in her most powerful novel since the Regeneration trilogy.'Bold, hard-hitting, unforgettable... a virtuoso rendition of the bombing, as huge swathes of London blaze away with the brightest of bright lights... Barker shows us how the city's finest moment was indubitably also its most terrifying, with luminous and unsparing insight.' Independent on Sunday'Barker's command of detail and gift for metaphor are as sharp as ever... As a tribute to those who dared and suffered on the home front, Noonday is in the first rank.' Antony Garner, Mail on Sunday'Narrative jumps colourfully alive, fizzes with energy.' Michele Roberts, Independent'Tremendously good.' Daily Mail'Pat Barker's Noonday marked the end of another war trilogy which shows no end to her talent in describing how conflicts rupture the soul.' Arifa Akbar, IndependentPraise for Pat Barker:'She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature.' Independent 'A brilliant stylist... Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation.' Sunday Telegraph'You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world.' The GuardianOther titles in the trilogy:Life ClassToby's Room
Regeneration (Regeneration #1)
by Pat BarkerA Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women SelectionThe modern classic of contemporary war fiction - a Man Booker Prize-nominated examination of World War I and its deep legacy of human traumas.'A brilliant novel. Intense and subtle' Peter Kemp, Sunday TimesCraiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, and army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. Rivers's job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet the closer he gets to mending his patients' minds the harder becomes every decision to send them back to the horrors of the front. Pat Barker's Regeneration is the classic exploration of how the traumas of war brutalised a generation of young men.This is the first novel in Pat Barker's Man Booker Prize-winning Regeneration Trilogy:I: RegenerationII: The Eye in the DoorIII: The Ghost Road'A vivid evocation of the agony of the First World War and a multi-layered exploration of all wars. A fine anthem for doomed youth' Time Out'A novel of tremendous power' Margaret Forster 'Unforgettable' Sunday Telegraph'One of the strongest and most interesting novelists of her generation' Guardian
The Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration; The Eye In The Door; The Ghost Road (The\wwi Trilogy Ser. #1)
by Pat BarkerThe Regeneration Trilogy is Pat Barker's sweeping masterpiece of British historical fiction. 1917, Scotland. At Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland, army psychiatrist William Rivers treats shell-shocked soldiers before sending them back to the front. In his care are poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. . .Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road follow the stories of these men until the last months of the war. Widely acclaimed and admired, Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy paints with moving detail the far-reaching consequences of a conflict which decimated a generation.'Harrowing, original, delicate and unforgettable' Independent'A new vision of what the First World War did to human beings, male and female, soldiers and civilians. Constantly surprising and formally superb' A. S. Byatt, Daily Telegraph'One of the few real masterpieces of late twentieth-century British fiction' Jonathan CoePat Barker was born in 1943. Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, comprising Regeneration (1991); which was made into a film of the same name; The Eye in the Door (1993), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize; and The Ghost Road (1995), which won the Booker Prize, as well as the more recent novels Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, Life Class and Toby's Room. She lives in Durham.
The Silence of the Girls: A Novel
by Pat BarkerThere was a woman at the heart of the Trojan war whose voice has been silent - till now.Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story?Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness history forgot.'Make[s] you reflect on the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, the women throughout history who have been told by men to forget their trauma... You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers' Evening StandardPraise for Pat Barker:'Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation' Sunday Telegraph'She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature' Independent'Barker is a writer of crispness and clarity and an unflinching seeker of the germ of what it means to be human' Herald'You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world' Guardian
Toby's Room (Life Class Trilogy Ser. #2)
by Pat BarkerToby's Room is the second novel in Pat Barker's Life Class Trilogy, returning to the First World War in a dark, compelling examination of human desire, wartime horror and the power of friendshipWhen Toby is reported 'Missing, Believed Killed', another secret casts a lengthening shadow over Elinor's world: how exactly did Toby die - and why? Elinor determines to uncover the truth. Only then can she finally close the door to Toby's room. Moving from the Slade School of Art to Queen Mary's Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in the rebuilding of the shattered faces of the wounded, Toby's Room is a riveting drama of identity, damage, intimacy and loss - this is Pat Barker's most powerful novel yet.'Heart-rendering return to the Great War . . . On every level, Toby's Room anatomises a world where extreme emotion shatters the boundaries of identity, behaviour, gender. Through the mask of Apollo bursts an omnipresent Dionysus' Independent'Once again Barker skilfully moves between past and present, seamlessly weaving fact and fiction into a gripping narrative' Sunday Telegraph'A gripping and moving exploration of the lasting effects of war' Woman & Home'A natural storyteller... the reader [will be] torn between wanting to linger over the sheer pleasure of the writing and the desire to rush towards the end to discover how it all pans out' Daily MailOther titles in the trilogy:Life ClassNoonday
Union Street (Virago Modern Classics #463)
by Pat BarkerVivid, bawdy and bitter' (The Times), Pat Barker's first novel shows the women of Union Street, young and old, meeting the harsh challeges of poverty and survival in a precarious world. There's Kelly, at eleven, neglected and independent, dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah, knocking on sixty and still on the game; Joanne, not yet twenty, not yet married, and already pregnant; Old Alice, welcoming her impending death; Muriel helplessly watching the decline of her stoical husband. And linking them all, watching over them all, mother to half the street, is fiery, indomitable Iris.
The Women of Troy: The new novel from the author of the bestselling The Silence of the Girls
by Pat BarkerFollowing her bestselling, critically acclaimed The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker continues her extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest myths.'Taut, masterly, wholly absorbing. Still one of the greatest stories ever written. A book that will be read in generations to come' Daily Telegraph on The Silence of the Girls Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home as victors - all they need is a good wind to lift their sails. But the wind has vanished, the seas becalmed by vengeful gods, and so the warriors remain in limbo - camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, kept company by the women they stole from it.The women of Troy.Helen - poor Helen. All that beauty, all that grace - and she was just a mouldy old bone for feral dogs to fight over.Cassandra, who has learned not to be too attached to her own prophecies. They have only ever been believed when she can get a man to deliver them.Stubborn Amina, with her gaze still fixed on the ruined towers of Troy, determined to avenge the slaughter of her king.Hecuba, howling and clawing her cheeks on the silent shore, as if she could make her cries heard in the gloomy halls of Hades. As if she could wake the dead.And Briseis, carrying her future in her womb: the unborn child of the dead hero Achilles. Once again caught up in the disputes of violent men. Once again faced with the chance to shape history.Masterful and enduringly resonant, ambitious and intimate, The Women of Troy continues Pat Barker's extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest classical myths, following on from the critically acclaimed The Silence of the Girls.
Michel Foucault: Subversions of the Subject
by Philip BarkerThis unique and original study analyzes Foucault's interaction with the history of ideas, undertaking a genealogy of the subject that subverts conventional philosophical history to develop a distinctly Foucauldian intellectual history. Through a detailed account of Foucault's work and its relation to the history of ideas, Philip Barker shows how that history can be usefully reconceptualised using Foucault's concepts of genealogy and archaeology. Locating the emergence of self-reflexive consciousness in twelfth century philosophy, and elaborating upon autobiography as a philosophical persona, Barker argues that this extremely productive approach can be used to analyze the relationship between the history of philosophy, psychoanalysis and the transparent subject.
Michel Foucault: Subversions of the Subject
by Philip BarkerThis unique and original study analyzes Foucault's interaction with the history of ideas, undertaking a genealogy of the subject that subverts conventional philosophical history to develop a distinctly Foucauldian intellectual history. Through a detailed account of Foucault's work and its relation to the history of ideas, Philip Barker shows how that history can be usefully reconceptualised using Foucault's concepts of genealogy and archaeology. Locating the emergence of self-reflexive consciousness in twelfth century philosophy, and elaborating upon autobiography as a philosophical persona, Barker argues that this extremely productive approach can be used to analyze the relationship between the history of philosophy, psychoanalysis and the transparent subject.
Come and Tell Me Some Lies
by Raffaella BarkerGabriella has many siblings and many more animals. Her father is an impoverished poet with a penchant for mending cars with string and optimism, her mother a classicist now more concerned with trying to keep track of hectic family life the the declining of verbs.Gabriella and her brothers run amuck through the attics and wilderness garden of their home Mildney. Here she experiences the triumphs and pitfalls of belonging to a wayward family; and longs for conformity. Her failure to achieve it is absolute.
From a Distance
by Raffaella BarkerBruised and brutalised by war, Michael returns to England on a troop ship, unable to face the life that awaits him at home. Impulsively he boards a train heading to the western tip of Cornwall. In doing so he changes his destiny. More than fifty years later, Kit, a charming stranger, arrives in a coastal Norfolk village to take up his inheritance – a decommissioned lighthouse, half hidden in the shadows of the past. Meanwhile Luisa falters in the flow of her life as her children begin to fly the nest and she is left suspended, without direction. When Kit and Luisa meet, neither can escape the consequences of Michael's split-second decision made all those decades ago.
From a Distance: A Novel
by Raffaella BarkerIn April 1946 Michael returns from war and finds he cannot face the life that awaits him at home. Impulsively he leaps on a train to the western tip of Cornwall, and in doing so changes his destiny. He finds himself in a bohemian colony of artists gathered on the Cornish coast, and his fate is shaped by his heart, his new environment, and the fragmented Britain to which he has returned.More than fifty years later, a man arrives in Norfolk to claim-reluctantly-his inheritance: an abandoned lighthouse, half hidden in the shadows of the past, now ready to cast its beam forward. Kit, a successful businessman, is fairly certain he wants no part in this legacy.In a farmhouse, a woman falters in the middle of her life. Louisa's children are leaving home and the constant push and pull of family life has turned like the tide of the Norfolk sea-she is suspended, without direction. When Kit and Louisa meet, neither can escape the consequences of Michael's split-second decision all those years ago. Moving between the postwar artists' colony in Cornwall and present-day Norfolk, Raffaella Barker's new novel explores the secrets and flaws that can shape generations. From a Distance is a nuanced and compelling story of human connection and our desire to belong.
Green Grass
by Raffaella BarkerLaura Sale has become invisible in her own life. Her domestic existence in North London with thirteen-year-old twins Dolly and Fred, and their father, the fascinating but ridiculously demanding Inigo, seems relentless, while her professional life fostering Inigo's career as Britain's most successful conceptual artist is frustrating and unfulfilling. What does she really like? What makes her laugh? Is a passionate existence passing her by?A chance encounter with Guy, the man she nearly married twenty years ago, is the catalyst she needs. Change comes in mysterious guises, and Laura finds herself confronting old ghosts, ferrets , a goat and a collapsing relationship, back in the rural Norfolk of her childhood holidays. As she starts to savour the space she has craved, she begins a new stage of her life with its own surprises, demons and delights. Taking control of her destiny, Laura finds it lit with possibility.
Hens Dancing: A Novel (Isis Hardcover Ser.)
by Raffaella BarkerVenetia Summers appears to lead a fairy-tale rural existence with her husband and two sons in her tumbledown Norfolk cottage. But when her husband leaves her for his masseuse, not even the arrival of a splendid baby daughter can make up for the sense of loss she feels for her newly lopsided family. Hens Dancing follows Venetia's diaries over the course of a year. It tells of domestic battles - with an unruly garden, errant cockerels, Orcs and War Hammers and a traumatic bathroom conversion. But there are also consolations: a passion for fun fur, the severe beauty of the Norfolk landscape, the regal serenity of The Beauty (Venetia's baby daughter) and perhaps, amongst it all, the promise of new love.
The Hook
by Raffaella BarkerChristy Naylor feels as if she is being cut open; her life is wrenched apart when her mother dies and her father's crazed reaction is to gamble. He wins a fish farm in a game of poker and uproots them from their lives in the patchwork of suburbia to live on a couple of watery fields and a lake full of fish fry.Unsettled and unsure of herself, Christy is seventeen, suffocating and suffering. Mick Fleet, tall, magnetic and overpowering, is irresistible. Christy falls for him, longing for him to hook her out of her sorrow and into his mystery. She knows nothing about him and plunges deep into an intense love affair, blind to the catastrophe he will bring...
A Perfect Life
by Raffaella BarkerWe all want a perfect life. At what price?What do you do when you should be happy, but you're not? What do you blame when you realise you don't want your husband anymore? What can you change when you see your family falling apart? What if you had the perfect life ... and it turned out to be anything but?