by PatBarker (Author)
When war breaks out in 1914, Paul Tarrant, a student at the Slade School of Art, leaves behind his attempted life as an artist and his beautiful fellow-student Elinore to tend to casualties on the front line. His life as a volunteer for the Belgian Red Cross is a world away from his days at the Slade, yet at times he canâ t help but think of the life-drawing room as he nurses the mutilated, dying bodies of French and German soldiers. Paulâ s feelings for Elinore are complicated by her contact with another fellow-student, Kit, who has been posted to a neighbouring field station, and by a visit from Elinore herself, who travels out to meet Paul in France before bombs force her to escape back to London. The longer Paul remains in Ypres, increasingly affected by the work he has to carry out, the greater the distance between him and Elinore becomes.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 248
Edition: Open market ed
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Published: 05 Jul 2007
ISBN 10: 0241142989
ISBN 13: 9780241142981
Praise for the works of Pat Barker
Calls to mind such early moderns as Hemingway and Fitzgerald...some of the most powerful antiwar literature in modern English fiction. -- The Boston Globe
Pat Barker understands the dynamics of psychic trauma and shutdown as well as any living writer. --Sven Birkerts, Esquire