Another World

by PatBarker (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.35

  Plagued by nightmarish memories of the trenches where he saw his brother die, Nick's grandfather Gordie lays dying as Nick struggles to keep the peace in his increasingly fractious home. As Nick's suburban family loses control over their world, Nick begins to learn his grandfather's buried secrets and comes to understand the power of old wounds to leak into the present. As a study of the power of memory and loss, Another World conveys with extraordinary intensity the ways in which the violent past returns to haunt and distort the present.

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.35

  In 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).

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $3.35

  Nick's grandfather Geordie lies dying. As Nick watches, Geordie starts to relive the horrors surrounding his brother's death in the painful days before his own. Meanwhile Nick and his wife Fran try to unite their increasingly fractious family by organizing the children into decorating the living room. Gradually, as the old wallpaper is peeled away an obscence portrait of an Edwardian family is revealed. The drawing is an exercise in hate, revealing the history of their house and casting a terrifying shadow over the family.