by Hayley Charlesworth
Pat Barker is one of the masters of wartime fiction. Her award-winning Regeneration Trilogy revolutionised the genre and was an epic and devastating examination of post-traumatic stress disorder against the backdrop of trench warfare. Her 2013 release Toby's Room is a companion novel to her earlier book Life Class, though both books can be read independently of each other. Again using the First World War as its subject, this book's primary focus is on the relationship between war and art.
Pat Barker is one of the masters of wartime fiction. Her award-winning Regeneration Trilogy revolutionised the genre and was an epic and devastating examination of post-traumatic stress disorder against the backdrop of trench warfare. Her 2013 release Toby's Room is a companion novel to her earlier book Life Class, though both books can be read independently of each other. Again using the First World War as its subject, this book's primary focus is on the relationship between war and art.
Elinor Brooke is an artist studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. To improve her accuracy in life-drawing, she takes an anatomy course where she becomes fully acquainted with the construction of the human body, particularly the face. While she has romantic interest from two men, she also maintains a worryingly close relationship with her brother Toby. Then the war hits, and Toby is declared "missing, presumed dead." Elinor, now working as an artist assisting in the reconstruction of faces following shrapnel injuries, teams with her former lover Paul Tarrant and with the horrifically wounded Kit Neville, their former friend and member of Toby's company, to discover the truth of what happened to her brother.
Barber's greatest skill is in vividly reconstructing the events of the first world war, but with a modern perspective. Elinor is very much a modern heroine with modern sensibilities, but does not feel in any way out of place in the story. This has the benefit of feeling authentic to the reader but also accessible to a contemporary audience. Her characters are all well-rounded and unique, especially the wounded, traumatised but still self-assured Kit Neville. Neville's dream sequences that hint at the truth of Toby's fate are some of the book's strongest moments.
The nature of Elinor and Toby's relationship in the pre-1914 sequence may raise a few eyebrows, but is nevertheless a device to make Elinor's later grief and determination even stronger. The paintings, with Toby's ghostly figure haunting the landscapes, only begin to hint at the inner darkness within Elinor following her brother's death.
One criticism may be that the truth of Toby's fate becomes increasingly obvious before Kit finally reveals it, but the moment in which Kit tells the truth still remains a beautifully written scene, as does Paul's reconstructed truth when he related the tale to Elinor. In many ways, this is a book of reconstruction: reconstructing faces, relationships, lives and truths.
As evidenced with Rivers, Sassoon and Owen in Regeneration, Barker flawlessly weaves real figures into her fictional narrative. In this case, she uses the artist Henry Tonks, who, like Elinor, anatomically drew the faces of patients to assist surgeons. Barker lists resources to see these drawings at the end of her book, which adds beautifully to the whole story.
Toby's Room is not Regeneration, but few things are. It is more difficult to immerse yourself in the world of war here as flawlessly as Regeneration does, but that's not the point. This is a family drama as much as it is a wartime take. What it does maintain is Barker's skill at constructing character, emotion, and her beautiful use of language. In short, Toby's Room is a wonderful read to mark the Centenary.
Barber's greatest skill is in vividly reconstructing the events of the first world war, but with a modern perspective. Elinor is very much a modern heroine with modern sensibilities, but does not feel in any way out of place in the story. This has the benefit of feeling authentic to the reader but also accessible to a contemporary audience. Her characters are all well-rounded and unique, especially the wounded, traumatised but still self-assured Kit Neville. Neville's dream sequences that hint at the truth of Toby's fate are some of the book's strongest moments.
The nature of Elinor and Toby's relationship in the pre-1914 sequence may raise a few eyebrows, but is nevertheless a device to make Elinor's later grief and determination even stronger. The paintings, with Toby's ghostly figure haunting the landscapes, only begin to hint at the inner darkness within Elinor following her brother's death.
One criticism may be that the truth of Toby's fate becomes increasingly obvious before Kit finally reveals it, but the moment in which Kit tells the truth still remains a beautifully written scene, as does Paul's reconstructed truth when he related the tale to Elinor. In many ways, this is a book of reconstruction: reconstructing faces, relationships, lives and truths.
As evidenced with Rivers, Sassoon and Owen in Regeneration, Barker flawlessly weaves real figures into her fictional narrative. In this case, she uses the artist Henry Tonks, who, like Elinor, anatomically drew the faces of patients to assist surgeons. Barker lists resources to see these drawings at the end of her book, which adds beautifully to the whole story.
Toby's Room is not Regeneration, but few things are. It is more difficult to immerse yourself in the world of war here as flawlessly as Regeneration does, but that's not the point. This is a family drama as much as it is a wartime take. What it does maintain is Barker's skill at constructing character, emotion, and her beautiful use of language. In short, Toby's Room is a wonderful read to mark the Centenary.
RSS Feed
