Toby's Room (The Life Class Trilogy)

Toby's Room (The Life Class Trilogy)

by PatBarker (Author)

Synopsis

Pat Barker returns to the First World War and to the characters of Life Class with her new novel Toby's Room, a dark, compelling story of human desire, wartime horror and the power of friendship. When 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. Toby's Room is Pat Barker's most powerful novel yet. Praise for Toby's Room: '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 Mail Pat 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.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Edition: 1st Edition Thus.
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Published: 16 Aug 2012

ISBN 10: 0241145228
ISBN 13: 9780241145227

Media Reviews
Praise for Life Class

Beautiful and evocative . . . A coming-of-age story that transcends the individual and gestures to the fate of a generation.
-- People

Life Class possesses organic power and narrative sweep . . . Barker conjures up the hellish terrors of war and its fallout with meticulous precision.
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Here, as in her best fiction, Barker unveils psychologically rich characters . . . and resists the trappings of a neat love story, reminding us once again that in art and life we remain infinitely mysterious.
-- San Francisco Chronicle

Praise for the Regeneration Trilogy

A masterwork . . . complex and ambitious.
-- The New York Times Book Review

It has been Pat Barker's accomplishment to enlarge the scope of the contemporary English novel.
-- The New Yorker

A literary achievement . . . remarkable.
-- San Francisco Chronicle

Some of the most powerful antiwar writing in modern fiction.
-- The Boston Globe
Author Bio
Pat Barker was born in Yorkshire and began her literary career in her forties, when she took a short writing course taught by Angela Carter. Encouraged by Carter to continue writing and exploring the lives of working class women, she sent her fiction out to publishers. Thirty-five years later, she has published fifteen novels, including her masterful Regeneration Trilogy, been made a CBE for services to literature, and won awards including the Guardian Fiction Prize and the UK's highest literary honour, the Booker Prize. She lives in Durham and her latest novel is The Silence of the Girls.