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Summary
Summary
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). 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.
Author Notes
Pat Barker's most recent novel is Another World (FSG, 1999). She is also the author of the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy: Regeneration; The Eye in the Door, winner of the 1993 Guardian Fiction Prize; and The Ghost Road, winner of the 1996 Booker Prize. She lives in England.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The author of the award-winning Regeneration trilogy has changed publishers and time frames for her newest book, but the result is as spellbinding as ever: thoughtful, acutely observed and profoundly moving. Geordie, a WWI veteran, is over 100, but is hanging on to life with the same stubbornness and iconoclasm that have seen him through the entire 20th century. His grandson, Nick, living in grim, contemporary Newcastle-on-Tyne, is struggling with his own life as he monitors Geordie's last days. Nick's teenage daughter from a previous marriage, Miranda, has come to stay; his new wife, Fran, with her own kid, Gareth, a computer games freak, has two-year-old Jasper to contend with and another baby on the way. Now it seems that their new house may be haunted by the kind of malign domestic spirit at large among Nick's little family. Geordie, too, has his own ghostsÄa hideous war memory, long buried, that must be exorcised before he can die in peace. Barker mixes brilliantly observed contemporary realism (the strains of family life with children of different ages have seldom been so powerfully rendered) and mystical overtones with dazzling skill. The book has the grip of a superior thriller while introducing, with no sense of strain, a sense of sorrowful mortality that lingers long after the last page. Geordie is a masterly creation, one of the most fully realized characters in contemporary fiction. (May) FYI: A film of Regeneration, starring Jonathan Pryce, was recently released in the U.S. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
``Ambivalent relationships'' among an embattled extended family whose confusions are mirrored and reshaped by the past are the intriguing matter of this eighth by the Booker-winning British author of, most recently, the Regeneration trilogy. The opening pages patiently expose the tensions that begin crackling when 13-year-old Miranda, middle-aged schoolteacher Nick's daughter (by his ex-wife Barbara), comes to visit Nick, his present (and pregnant) wife Fran, their two-year-old Jasper, and preadolescent computer-game fanatic Gareth, Fran's son by her ex. Barker sorts through these and other equally intricate particulars with commendable economy, while simultaneously constructing a rich narrative that's as attentive to the kitchen-sink minutiae of domestic frustration (such as buying kids' shoes) as to her story's more immediately dramatic matters. These include the family's accidental discovery, while stripping old wallpaper away, of a disturbing pornographic painting beneath it'presumably of the wealthy Fanshawes, the original owners of their house; Nick's consequent realization that an alleged child murder may have occurred ``where they live and sleep and eat''; and'in the novel's boldest revelation of how the past continuously grips the present'the long death-in-life of Nick's centenarian grandfather Geordie. A WWI veteran who compulsively mourns the comrades killed decades ago (``Every August 31st I'd say the lads' names over to meself''), Geordie also keeps reliving the battlefield death of his brother Harry, which resonates enigmatically in his memory and conscience. That heritage of loss and its lingering aftereffects are shown'with flinty clarity'in all their complex relation to Nick and his loved ones, though Barker's lovely conclusion paradoxically affirms the ``wisdom . . . [of] let[ting] the innocent and the guilty . . . lie together beneath their half-erased names . . . under the obliterating grass.'' Of such imaginative complexity and generosity are first-rate fiction made, and Barker keeps on making it about as well as anybody now writing.
Booklist Review
Barker is the author of the much-acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, the last volume of which, The Ghost Road, won the 1996 Booker Prize. Her latest novel is a disturbing, layered story that centers on a century-long cycle of sibling violence. Nick and his wife, Fran, await their second child. They each have a child by a previous marriage; hers already lives with them, and his now arrives to spend the summer. In the meantime, Nick's grandfather lies dying, and in the process of tending to his needs, Nick learns of, by way of a recorded reminiscence, a darkness in his grandfather's past, pertaining to the death of the old gentleman's brother. Then, too, Nick and Fran are remodeling their house, which leads them to strip the wallpaper in the living room, revealing an amazingly lewd depiction of the family that occupied the premises in Edwardian times. Nick learns from others the story of that family, a haunting tale that has resonance in the way Nick's stepson treats Nick's natural son. --Brad Hooper
Library Journal Review
Having first won literary acclaim for her gritty depictions of contemporary English working-class life in such novels as Union Street (1982), Barker then moved into historical fiction with her Regeneration trilogy, set during World War I; the final volume, The Ghost Road (LJ 2/15/96), won the 1995 Booker Prize. Now in the haunting Another World, she effectively combines the past with the present. Its a hot summer in the industrial city of Newcastle, and Nick is struggling to care for his ailing centenarian grandfather Geordie while coping with growing tensions in his own blended family. Theres the visiting Miranda, Nicks teenage daughter from a previous marriage; resentful stepson Gareth; and Nicks pregnant wife, Fran, exhausted and angry from having to deal with two-year-old Jasper and the other kids without Nicks help. When the family uncovers beneath the wallpaper of their living room a pornographic portrait of the houses original Victorian owners and Nick discovers that a child may have been murdered there, a malevolent spirit is released among them. At the same time, the dying Geordie relives his brothers death during World War I. Barkers ambiguous use of supernatural elements makes this a suspenseful read, but the books real power lies in her vividly drawn characters, from the guilt-ridden Geordie to Gareth, a lonely little boy made hateful by the knowledge that he is unloved and unwanted. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/99.]Wilda Willams, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.