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lu2cy_i's review against another edition
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
katiealex72's review against another edition
5.0
This book is a little gem! Short, but beautifully crafted. Pat Barker is such a talented writer.
Of her books, I’ve read and enjoyed the Silence of the Girls, set in Ancient Near East, and the Regeneration trilogy, about some of the WW1 English soldier-poets, but I hadn’t heard of this one. It was written in the 1980s, one of her first novels, and is set in the place where she is from; the north of England. It’s not a murder mystery, although it is a story about serial murders, but it’s told entirely from the point of view of the sex workers who are being terrorised rather than the police dicks trying to catch the killer. It’s not until you read from the women victims’ POV that you realise how much popular culture we consume is entirely from the other side.
And the women are wonderful, but damn they have horrible lives. They live cheek by jowl in an impoverished part of an unnamed city (Manchester? Newcastle?), treated like shit by their men, sometimes pimped and sometimes not. They have basically two options… work at the local chicken factory (there is a recurring motif of hens to the slaughter) and try to find someone cheap yet reliable and not perverted to look after the ‘bairns’, or dangerous sex work on the streets, where brothels are illegal and the cops arrest the women rather than the clients. Despite the increasing number of horribly mutilated corpses of their friends showing up, stopping isn’t an option. And the police aren’t protecting them but using them as bait to catch him.
This book feels extremely authentic in a way that her other books, while terrific, could not. Very highly recommended!
Of her books, I’ve read and enjoyed the Silence of the Girls, set in Ancient Near East, and the Regeneration trilogy, about some of the WW1 English soldier-poets, but I hadn’t heard of this one. It was written in the 1980s, one of her first novels, and is set in the place where she is from; the north of England. It’s not a murder mystery, although it is a story about serial murders, but it’s told entirely from the point of view of the sex workers who are being terrorised rather than the police dicks trying to catch the killer. It’s not until you read from the women victims’ POV that you realise how much popular culture we consume is entirely from the other side.
And the women are wonderful, but damn they have horrible lives. They live cheek by jowl in an impoverished part of an unnamed city (Manchester? Newcastle?), treated like shit by their men, sometimes pimped and sometimes not. They have basically two options… work at the local chicken factory (there is a recurring motif of hens to the slaughter) and try to find someone cheap yet reliable and not perverted to look after the ‘bairns’, or dangerous sex work on the streets, where brothels are illegal and the cops arrest the women rather than the clients. Despite the increasing number of horribly mutilated corpses of their friends showing up, stopping isn’t an option. And the police aren’t protecting them but using them as bait to catch him.
This book feels extremely authentic in a way that her other books, while terrific, could not. Very highly recommended!
gitli57's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
4.0
This is marketed as a murder mystery, but it isn't. It's about a community of women, mostly sex workers and chicken factory workers, stuck in a time and place (Thatcher's UK) that offers them little support while they face poverty, injustice and random acts of horrific violence. But they find ways to support each other and keep moving forward. Uncompromising and real. This is my first Barker and now I want everything.
gorecki's review against another edition
5.0
There are three ways to die in this book: a literal, a lateral, and a cripling one. In the first case you're gone and that's it. In the second, someone else is gone and you're left to drag that loss around. In the third you survive, but at what cost? This is not a new or original thought, something just happens one day and shatters you. There's nothing original about death.
There is, however, something original in the way Pat Barker “does death”: a sense of hovering in the air above her characters, like you're observing things from the top of a viaduct or through Kath's eyes in her picture on the billboard. You zoom in and out, but in the end you're simply helplessly and mutely observing how things collapse without being able to do anything about it. You feel things shifting, you know what is coming, but there's this silent, still-air quality to the writing that just leaves you hovering, looking on, and hoping that it will be over soon, that it will be quick and that there will be some sort of justice. But if it is quick, then it’s even worse: the fragility, the extinguishability of life is so startling.
Blow Your House Down is written in the manner most absolutely brilliant female authors use - without pity or anger, just a observant, factual delivery with incredible attention to detail and the small things surrounding the characters that bring all the punches and sharp intakes of air. A "show-don't-tell" approach you can only find in what I believe to be the greatest lirerary writing. Part 3 of this book contained some of the finest paragraphs on love, relationships and loss that I've read in a long while, and it absolutely broke my bones. What Pat Barker made me feel with just a few pages of this part of the book, other writers have not been able to do across a full novel. I felt my chest expand and billow on my train ride to work - I could half fly, half burst of all the beauty of the pure emotions laid out on the page in front of me.
My eloquence might leaving me with this one, but Pat Barker never will. I'll make sure of it.
There is, however, something original in the way Pat Barker “does death”: a sense of hovering in the air above her characters, like you're observing things from the top of a viaduct or through Kath's eyes in her picture on the billboard. You zoom in and out, but in the end you're simply helplessly and mutely observing how things collapse without being able to do anything about it. You feel things shifting, you know what is coming, but there's this silent, still-air quality to the writing that just leaves you hovering, looking on, and hoping that it will be over soon, that it will be quick and that there will be some sort of justice. But if it is quick, then it’s even worse: the fragility, the extinguishability of life is so startling.
Blow Your House Down is written in the manner most absolutely brilliant female authors use - without pity or anger, just a observant, factual delivery with incredible attention to detail and the small things surrounding the characters that bring all the punches and sharp intakes of air. A "show-don't-tell" approach you can only find in what I believe to be the greatest lirerary writing. Part 3 of this book contained some of the finest paragraphs on love, relationships and loss that I've read in a long while, and it absolutely broke my bones. What Pat Barker made me feel with just a few pages of this part of the book, other writers have not been able to do across a full novel. I felt my chest expand and billow on my train ride to work - I could half fly, half burst of all the beauty of the pure emotions laid out on the page in front of me.
My eloquence might leaving me with this one, but Pat Barker never will. I'll make sure of it.
chardiana's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
aprilconnolly's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Violence, and Death
Moderate: Alcoholism and Addiction
katieejayne's review against another edition
3.0
I will maintain to my deathbed that this is most definitely a book loosely based around the Yorkshire Ripper's murders. No matter what the author suggests. I mean a novel about prostitutes being killed by one man around the Leeds area...There's not really much room to dispute it. Down to the mention of a woman that survived the attack but was left with a 'crater' in the back of her head.
Pat Barker focused on the victims in this novel rather than the killer. She created a novel that followed the lives of prostitutes in a way that emphasised their humanity. There was, and to an extent, still is a stigma surrounding it but the way Barker wrote the novel showed them as what they are. People, people with lives, problems and ultimately victims. The way of a persons life doesn't necessarily make them immune to being a victim. Nor should it be a deciding factor on whether they become a victim.
Though I was disappointed with the ending of this book I did enjoy it. I wish the character of Jean had been explored later in the novel more and that perhaps we had seen her repeat certain behaviours. It seemed a very quick departure from her character to that of Maggie. Whose arc, though important, seemed an odd place to end the book.
A quick, gritty and in some places very difficult read, but with a very unique perspective.
www.a-novel-idea.co.uk
Pat Barker focused on the victims in this novel rather than the killer. She created a novel that followed the lives of prostitutes in a way that emphasised their humanity. There was, and to an extent, still is a stigma surrounding it but the way Barker wrote the novel showed them as what they are. People, people with lives, problems and ultimately victims. The way of a persons life doesn't necessarily make them immune to being a victim. Nor should it be a deciding factor on whether they become a victim.
Though I was disappointed with the ending of this book I did enjoy it. I wish the character of Jean had been explored later in the novel more and that perhaps we had seen her repeat certain behaviours. It seemed a very quick departure from her character to that of Maggie. Whose arc, though important, seemed an odd place to end the book.
A quick, gritty and in some places very difficult read, but with a very unique perspective.
www.a-novel-idea.co.uk
jnewman06's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
gaberobinson's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
wyemu's review against another edition
2.0
Set in a different era and with a vastly different cast of characters to Barker's more well known books, the 'Regeneration' Trilogy, 'Blow Your House Down is about a group of women who earn their money walking the streets. Even though their occupation is the same the women themselves are very different from each other and are 'on the game' for varying reasons. Readers of 'Union Street' will recognise this style of writing from Barker but having been introduced to her through the 'Regeneration' trilogy, and enjoyed them a lot more than this and other novels, I found it harder to enjoy this. Barker seems to prefer subjects that are usually pushed under the surface, in this case the lives of the women engaged in unseemly nocturnal activities. I didn't particularly like any of the characters, but this is not because they lack warmth, personality or characteristics that make them stand out in the novel, I just didn't get on with them and found it hard to understand the choices they had and continued, to make. I've said it before but I'll still be sticking to Barker's war novels.