Life Class, Pat Barker
Life Class, Pat Barker
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Life Class

Author: Pat Barker

Narrator: Russell Boulter

Unabridged: 7 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/29/2008

Synopsis

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.

About Pat Barker

Pat Barker was born in Yorkshire and began her literary career in her forties, when she took a short writing course taught by Angela Carter. She has published sixteen novels, including her masterful Regeneration Trilogy which includes the Booker Prize-winning The Ghost Road. The Silence of the Girls was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and won an Independent Bookshop Award 2019. The Women of Troy was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. The Voyage Home continues the series.

About Russell Boulter

Russell Boulter is an English actor who has been seen on stage in Madness of George Dubya, Macbeth, and Star Quality, while his many television appearances include Judge John Deed, EastEnders, Murder in Suburbia, Merseybeat, A&E, Where the Heart Is, Casualty, The Bill, and Heartbeat.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Trin on August 04, 2008

I love the Regeneration trilogy so much, but I just can’t get into Barker’s other work. Her latest novel struck me as weirdly unfocused: the first half follows Paul through art school and various romantic assignations, including a quasi love triangle thing; I didn’t find it particularly compelling.......more

Goodreads review by Elaine on February 01, 2016

This is a Pat Barker two, not an overall two. Probably an overall three. No one writes World War I and that period as well as Barker, and in general her prose is smooth and compelling. The problem is that the War becomes such an outsize character in this book that nothing else really fully comes to......more

Quotes

“Beautiful and vocative...A coming-of-age story that transcends the individual and gestures to the fate of a generation.” People

“Barker’s grim, gray depiction of the hospital at the front, and of ghastliness of combat, approaches her finest writing, elegant and sweeping…She is the best English novelist working today.” Entertainment Weekly

“Written with wrenching, telling detail…Life Class feels urgent and timely.” The Miami Herald

“Mature, unsentimental and searching. One of this excellent writer’s finest books.” Kirkus (starred review)

“The author’s unflinching eye for detail and her supple prose create an undeniably powerful narrative.” Publishers Weekly

“Readers…will appreciate the care she takes in her rich, deliberate character building.” Booklist

Awards

  • New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books
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