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A review by jove64
Life Class by Pat Barker
5.0
I first read this back in 2007 when I saw it in the shop at the Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres. I had read Barker's Regeneration Trilogy and liked it so thought I'd give it a try. I remember liking it. I suspect I traded that copy in for something else in the English language 2nd hand bookshop in Amsterdam. I was recently offered a Kindle deal on this trilogy and I hadn't even realized it was a trilogy. So I started again from the beginning and read the whole trilogy together.
The overall theme of this trilogy is the value of art and of art making as work. The complexities of class and gender in relation to this theme are explored in a nuanced way. The war(s) provide a context in which this question is particularly fraught. The story is about relationships, none of which are particularly straightforward.
Barker is a wonderful writer. I really enjoyed this. We are seeing the war(s) through the eyes of visual artists and her ability to convey this in words is amazing. It's war though. It's not pretty.
The overall theme of this trilogy is the value of art and of art making as work. The complexities of class and gender in relation to this theme are explored in a nuanced way. The war(s) provide a context in which this question is particularly fraught. The story is about relationships, none of which are particularly straightforward.
Barker is a wonderful writer. I really enjoyed this. We are seeing the war(s) through the eyes of visual artists and her ability to convey this in words is amazing. It's war though. It's not pretty.