Book Summary and Reviews of Life Class by Pat Barker

Life Class by Pat Barker

Life Class

A Novel

by Pat Barker

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Readers' Rating (17):
  • Published:
  • Jan 2008, 320 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

In this superb new novel, Pat Barker returns to her most renowned subject: the devastation and psychic damage wrought by WWI on all levels of British society. In the spring of 1914, a group of young students gather in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two components of a love triangle, and at the outset of the war, they turn to each other. After volunteering for the Red Cross, Paul must confront the fact that life, love, and art will never be the same for him. Pat Barker is unrivaled in her ability to convey simple, moving human truths. Her skill in relaying the harrowing experience of modern warfare is matched by the depth of insight she brings to the experience of love and the morality of art in a time of war. Life Class is one of her genuine masterpieces.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Mature, unsentimental and searching. One of this excellent writer's finest books." - Kirkus Reviews.

"With great tenderness and insight, and a daring to forgo simple resolutions, Barker conveys a wartime world turned upside down." - The Independent (UK).

"As ever with Barker…the writing is breathtaking…sharply written and elegantly constructed." - The Guardian (UK).

"Mature, unsentimental and searching. One of this excellent writer's finest books." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about Life Class was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Pat Barker Author Biography

Photo: Justine Stoddard

Par Barker is the author of Union Street, Blow Your House Down, Liza's England, The Man Who Wasn't There, the Regeneration trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize), Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, and the Life Class trilogy (Life Class, Toby's Room, and Noonday). She lives in Durham, England.

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