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A review by emilybh
The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker
5.0
It's difficult to convey how engaging and satisfying Barker's writing is: returning to a well-crafted character, Rivers, and keeping him at the centre of a shifting novelistic space allows Barker to explore the chaos around and within him.
Amongst strips of very human dialogue, humour flashes through in a surprising manner, mingling with dark images and underpinned by an anti-war commentary.
This is a war novel which goes back to society: the war asked men to be something they were not, and this novel shows how a process of reversal unravelled. A society held in war revealed what it truly was, whilst its men donned the masks of soldiers and left what they were.
Amongst strips of very human dialogue, humour flashes through in a surprising manner, mingling with dark images and underpinned by an anti-war commentary.
This is a war novel which goes back to society: the war asked men to be something they were not, and this novel shows how a process of reversal unravelled. A society held in war revealed what it truly was, whilst its men donned the masks of soldiers and left what they were.