Reviews

The Eye In The Door by Pat Barker

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fifo_86's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

ancientolive's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

nocto's review against another edition

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3.0

This is the second part of a trilogy; I loved the first volume and put off reading this one for a few months because I didn't want to race through the books too fast and get burnt out (it's happened to me too many times before!).

Initially I loved this book just as much but as it went on I became confused, I missed matching up characters with their previous appearances in the book, and therefore began to put it down more which just made things worse. I definitely lost the plot somewhere!

I'll certainly read the third volume, and I'm not really sure what was wrong with this one, but I hope for a better experience next time

karna's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

geoffreyjen's review against another edition

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5.0

[a:Pat Barker|4000|Pat Barker|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1539120639p2/4000.jpg]'s books are never straightforward tellings of events. She deals with the traumas of war, and it would seem this has to be done in tangential ways, by not looking at the subject in order to look at it. One of the reasons I started reading Barker's books is because I have my own project writing about trauma and it was suggested to me to look at how she did it. I have found her methods to be exactly right and reinforce my own asides to get at the subject. This book, like the one before it, perhaps even more so, has passages of sheer brilliance. The book overall is less cohesive than the first one, but the writing is more powerful. The whole idea of "the eye in the door"! More than just a metaphor or symbol, the whole history of trauma is bound up into it. In a sense, the eye in the door is the ultimate trigger, which is, of course, the central problem of trauma : how to gain access to it without retriggering the harmful experiences which can self-reinforce. Not the easiest novel, but brilliant nonetheless.

I found large sections of this book riveting, but not because of any action or even relational interactions, but rather for its efforts to ferret out the dynamics of neuroses, trauma, dissociations, and so forth. So relational, yes, but of a very specific kind. And ultimately the analysis reminded me of [a:Robertson Davies|23129|Robertson Davies|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1225671081p2/23129.jpg]'s [b:The Manticore|114496|The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy, #2)|Robertson Davies|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309286341l/114496._SY75_.jpg|1336039], perhaps inevitably, even though that book was about Jungian analysis and this was not. Difficult material to handle well, but done with a great deal of delicacy here. A thoroughly good book, and I am motivated to tackle the third volume as well.