Noonday

Description

The Booker-winning author of the definitive First World War trilogy, Regeneration, turns for the first time to the Second World War London, the Blitz, autumn 1940. Ambulance drivers Elinor Brooke and Kit Neville ferry injured survivors from bombsites to hospitals while Elinor's husband Paul works as an air-raid warden. Once fellow students at the Slade School of Fine Art, before the First World War destroyed the hopes of their generation, now all three find themselves caught in another war. And as the bombing intensifies, old loves and obsessions resurface until Elinor is brought face to face with an almost impossible choice. Completing the story of Elinor, Paul and Kit that began with Life Class and continued with Toby's Room, Noonday is both a stand-alone novel and the climax of a trilogy. Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London to electrifying life in her most powerful novel since the Regeneration trilogy.

Pat Barker was born in 1943. She is the author of Union Street, Blow your House Down, The Century's Daughter, The Man Who Wasn't There, the Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road), Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, and the Life Class Trilogy (Life Class, Toby's Room and Noonday). Pat Barker lives in Durham.

Barker's command of detail and gift for metaphor are as sharp as ever: her evocation of the bombed city is steeped in drama... Noonday is in the first rank Mail on Sunday Tremendously good Daily Mail This is the first time the author of the Regeneration Trilogy has written about the Second World War and it's a triumph Stylist Many strokes of genius from Barker... accessible and moving Sunday Times Noonday's Blitz-era setting gives Barker ample opportunity to do what she does best Spectator Powerful and vivid, with nuanced characters and Barker's unerring eye for detail Women and Home Bold, hard-hitting, unforgettable... a virtuoso rendition of the bombing, as huge swathes of London blaze away with the brightest of bright lights... Barker shows us how the city's finest moment was indubitably also its most terrifying, with luminous and unsparing insight Independent on Sunday Ambitious, vivid, sharp... The closer you get to the end, the more lives need saving and the more thwarted and complicated the domestic backdrop... Barker's chronological leap is a sophisticated bridge between the drama of the present and the haunted history of the past Daily Telegraph Colourfully alive, fizzes with energy... the novel's point of view swivel[s] like a torchbeam to illuminate London's devastated streets Independent The book has its own inherent power thanks to Barker's skilful rendering of the texture of the period but it is richer and more rewarding if read with the other two volumes of this beautifully crafted trilogy Daily Express