A review by janebranson
Double Vision by Pat Barker

4.0

I felt this book was mis-described in the blurb. It's a very good read, but it doesn't quite do the things claimed for it; it does other great things instead. Particularly interesting is the exploration of how war is represented, particularly in photographic art. This widens out, as one of the characters is a foreign correspondent and one is a sculptor, so that some general ideas about the hows and whys of art are also touched on. There is also a more uncomfortable thread about crime and the possibility of rehabilitation, and a range of more domestic issues also pop up - parenting, the value of different types of work, marital failure. All this is played out amongst a set of characters who feel, when you list them like this, a bit like the cast of a Miss Marple drama - the village vicar, the vicar's admirer, the vicar's nubile daughter, the doctor etc. I really enjoyed it, especially the narrative voice, which manages to be very authentic even while shifting between several close to third-person perspectives.