Life Class: A Novel | Pat Barker | Interesting setting; uninspired characters

Life Class: A Novel | Pat Barker | A coda to the "Regeneration" trilogy

books:

Life Class: A Novel

	Life Class: A Novel Pat Barker Doubleday, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 25 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

From the Booker Prize?winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy, an acknowledged masterpiece of modern fiction, class="textlinks">Life Class is an exceptional new novel of artists and lovers caught in the maelstrom of the Great War.

It is the spring of 1914 and a group of young students have gathered in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two parts of an intriguing love triangle and, in the first days of war, they turn to each other. As spring turns to summer, Paul volunteers for the Belgian Red Cross and tends to wounded, dying soldiers from the front line. By the time he returns, Paul must confront the fact that life and love will never be the same for him again.

In Life Class, Pat Barker returns to her most renowned subject: the human devastation and psychic damage wrought by World War One on all levels of British society. 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.

for more information click here

Interesting setting; uninspired characters

I haven't read much fiction set during WWI and I thought the juxtaposition of the war front and the art school was very interesting and promising. The setting did come alive: the isolation of the art world and the horror of the battlefield hosptial are both well drawn. Unfortunately, the characters did not seem to come alive. They were interesting but I never felt a sense of compassion or even liking for them. And the ending, perhaps, reflects that is how they felt about each other.

A coda to the "Regeneration" trilogy

Many people feel that Pat Barker's newest World War I era class="textlinks">novel is not nearly as good as the novels in her "Regeneration" trilogy, and I think that's true. Still, it is worth reading after you've read "Regeneration," "The Eye in the Door," and "The Ghost Road." "Life Class" acts as a kind of coda to the earlier novels. In it, Barker once again depicts, as only she can, the front lines and the sheltered places right next to them (like Paul's apartment in Ypres) where people, as best they can, keep to their accustomed routines. The character of Elinor is interesting; she is someone for whom the war is at once a reality (she visits Paul in Belgium, her brother enlists) and something that isn't real at all. She's sympathetic, she feels sorrow, but a cold inner part of her is not touched because the war has nothing to do with her ideas of art and self. This is not an entirely successful characterization, but I think Barker is right: that there are people like Elinor who wall themselves off emotionally from catastrophic events that might destroy what they hold dear.

for more information click here

A great premise, but I couldn't bring myself to like the characters

_class="textlinks">Life Class_ follows the relationships of several young Englishmen (and women) just prior to and during the First World War. Artists, enrolled at the Slade, they are effected by the pre-war enthusiasm and the horror they discover as the war progresses. Barker does a wonderful job of putting the reader at that place and time, a rare gift, and a reason why I will read other books by her, if this is any indication of her talent as a writer. However, I couldn't give the book more than three stars based on the characters. Simply put, I had a difficult time empathizing or identifying with any of them.

In order for me to become truly engrossed in a story, there has to be some connection between the reader and (at least one of) the characters. Sadly, I found all of Barker's characters wanting - either shallow, petulant, immature, or (in one case) simplyt downright annoying. Admittedly there are people who are really like this in the real world; I intentionally choose not to associate with them. In the same vein, I would prefer not to read about their lives, either.

In the final analysis, _Life Class_ is a fine book, and there is much to like in her story-telling. This particular book, however, was not for me.

for more information click here

Good, but not her best

This well written book is set in World War I, a background that is to English writers what the Civil War is to American, a broad canvas on which to paint. And in this tale, artists are sucked into WWI and are forced to come to terms with their ideas of what makes art and whether it even has a place in a war-torn world.
The writing is graceful, the romantic sub-plot well done, but this class="textlinks">novel simply does not have the force of Barker's Regeneration Trilogy. The war is more backdrop than exploration, and those who are looking for an evocation of the horrors life at the front (while touched upon in this book) should go to that unforgetable Trilogy or to Sebastian Faulks incredible "Birdsong". But these set a high bar. Class Life is good, well worth reading. Those are just better.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

products you might be interested in