Wikipedia

Pat Barker

For the Irish professor of accounting, seePat Barker (academic).

Patricia Mary W. Barker,CBE,FRSL,Hon FBA(néeDrake;born 8 May 1943) is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. She is known for herRegeneration Trilogy,published in the 1990s, and, more recently, a series of books set during theTrojan War,starting withThe Silence of the Girlsin 2018.

Pat Barker

CBE,FRSL,FBA
Pat Barker in October 2012
Pat Barker in October 2012
BornPatricia Mary W. Drake
(1943-05-08)8 May 1943(age 81)
Thornaby-on-Tees, North Riding of Yorkshire,England
OccupationNovelist
Alma materLondon School of Economics
SubjectMemory, trauma, survival, recovery
Notable worksRegeneration Trilogy
Notable awardsBooker Prize,GuardianFirst Book Award
SpouseDavid Barker
Children2

Early life and education

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Patricia Mary W. Drake[1]was born on 8 May 1943[2]to a working-class family inThornaby-on-Teesin theNorth Riding of Yorkshire,England.[3]Her mother Moyra died in 2000;[2]her father's identity is unknown. According toThe Times,Moyra became pregnant "after a drunken night out while inthe Wrens."In a social climate whereillegitimacywas regarded with shame, she told people that the resulting child was her sister, rather than her daughter. They lived with Barker's grandmother Alice and step-grandfather William, until her mother married and moved out when Barker was seven.[4]Barker could have joined her mother, she toldThe Guardianin 2003, but chose to stay with her grandmother "because of love of her, and because my stepfather didn't warm to me, nor me to him."[2]Her grandparents ran afish and chip shopwhich failed and the family was, she toldThe Timesin 2007, "poor as church mice; we were living onNational Assistance– 'on the pancrack', as my grandmother called it. "[4]

At the age of eleven, Barker won a place atgrammar school,attendingKing James Grammar SchoolinKnaresboroughandGrangefield Grammar Schoolin Stockton-on-Tees.[5]

Barker, who says she has always been an avid reader, studied international history at theLondon School of Economicsfrom 1962-65.[6]After graduating in 1965, she returned home to nurse her grandmother, who died in 1971.

Career

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Early work

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Barker has written many novels.[7]In her mid-twenties, Barker began to write fiction. Her first three novels were never published and, she toldThe Guardianin 2003, "didn't deserve to be: I was being a sensitive lady novelist, which is not what I am. There's an earthiness and bawdiness in my voice.”[2]

Her first published novel wasUnion Street(1982), which consisted of seven interlinked stories aboutEnglish working classwomen whose lives are circumscribed by poverty and violence.[citation needed]For ten years, the manuscript was rejected by publishers as too "bleak and depressing."[8]Barker met novelistAngela Carterat anArvon Foundationwriters' workshop. Carter liked the book, telling Barker "if they can't sympathise with the women you're creating, then sod their fucking luck," and suggested she send the manuscript tofeminist publisherVirago,which accepted it.[2]TheNew Statesmanhailed the novel as a "long overdue working class masterpiece,"[2]andThe New York Times Book Reviewcommented Barker "gives the sense of a writer who has enormous power that she has scarcely had to tap to write a first-rate first novel."[9]Union Streetwas later adapted as the Hollywood filmStanley & Iris(1990), starringRobert De NiroandJane Fonda.Barker has said the film bears little resemblance to her book.[citation needed]As of 2003, the novel remained one of Virago's top sellers.[2]

Barker's first three novels –Union Street(1982),Blow Your House Down(1984) andLiza's England(1986; originally published asThe Century's Daughter) – depicted the lives of working-class women inYorkshire.BookForummagazine described them as "full of feeling, violent and sordid, but never exploitative or sensationalistic and rarely sentimental."[10]Blow Your House Downportrays prostitutes living in aNorth of Englandcity, who are being stalked by aserial killer.[11]Liza's England,described by theSunday Timesas a "modern-day masterpiece," tracks the life of a working-class woman born at the dawn of the 20th century.[12]

Regeneration Trilogy

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Following the publication ofLiza's England,Barker felt she "had got myself into a box where I was strongly typecast as a northern, regional, working class, feminist—label, label, label—novelist. It's not a matter so much of objecting to the labels, but you do get to a point where people are reading the labels instead of the book. And I felt I'd got to that point", she said in 1992.[8]She said she was tired of reviewers asking "'but uh, can she do men?' – as though that were some kind of Everest".[13]

Therefore, she turned her attention to theFirst World War,which she had always wanted to write about due to her step-grandfather's wartime experiences. Wounded by abayonetand left with a scar, he would not speak about the war.[8]She was inspired to write what is now known as theRegeneration Trilogy—Regeneration(1991),The Eye in the Door(1993), andThe Ghost Road(1995)—a set of novels that explore the history of the First World War by focusing on the aftermath of trauma. The books are an unusual blend of history and fiction, and Barker draws extensively on the writings ofFirst World War poetsandW.H.R. Rivers,an army doctor who worked withtraumatised soldiers.The main characters are based on historical figures, such asRobert Graves,Alice and Hettie Roper (pseudonyms forAlice Wheeldonand her daughter Hettie) with the exception of Billy Prior, whom Barker invented to parallel and contrast with British soldier-poetsWilfred OwenandSiegfried Sassoon.As the central fictional character, Billy Prior is in all three books.[14]

“I think the whole British psyche is suffering from the contradiction you see in Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, where the war is both terrible and never to be repeated and at the same time experiences derived from it are given enormous value," Barker toldThe Guardian."No one watches war films in quite the way the British do."[15]

Barker told freelance journalist Wera Reusch "I think there is a lot to be said for writing about history, because you can sometimes deal with contemporary dilemmas in a way people are more open to because it is presented in this unfamiliar guise, they don't automatically know what they think about it, whereas if you are writing about a contemporary issue on the nose, sometimes all you do is activate people's prejudices. I think the historical novel can be a backdoor into the present which is very valuable."[16]

The Regeneration Trilogywas extremely well received by critics, with Peter Kemp of theSunday Timesdescribing it as "brilliant, intense and subtle",[17]andPublishers Weeklysaying it was "a triumph of an imagination at once poetic and practical."[18]The trilogy is described byThe New York Timesas "a fierce meditation on the horrors of war and its psychological aftermath."[19]NovelistJonathan Coedescribes it as "one of the few real masterpieces of late 20th centuryBritish fiction."[2]British author and critic,Rosemary Dinnagereviewing inThe New York Review of Booksdeclared that it has "earned her a well-deserved place in literature"[14]resulting in its re-issue for the centenary of the First World War. In 1995 the final book in the trilogy,The Ghost Road,won theBooker–McConnell Prize.[20]

Critical appraisal

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Barker's work is described as direct, blunt and plainspoken.[21][2]

In 2012,The Observernamed theRegeneration Trilogyas one of "The 10 best historical novels".[22]

Awards and recognition

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In 1983, Barker won theFawcett Societyprize for fiction forUnion Street.In 1993 she won theGuardian Fiction Prizefor theEye in the Door,and in 1995 she won theBooker PrizeforThe Ghost Road.In May 1997, Barker was awarded an honorary doctorate by theOpen University.[23]In 2000, she was named aCommander of the Order of the British Empire(CBE).[2]

In the review of her novelToby's Room,The Guardianstated about her writing, "You don't go to her for fine language, you go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world".[24]

The Independentwrote of her, "she is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature".[25]

In 2019, Barker was shortlisted for theWomen's Prize for FictionforThe Silence of the Girls.[26]In their review of the novel,The Timeswrote, "Chilling, powerful, audacious... A searing twist onThe Iliad.Amid the recent slew of rewritings of the great Greek myths and classics, Barker's stands out for its forcefulness of purpose and earthy compassion ".[27]The Guardianstated, "This is an important, powerful, memorable book that invites us to look differently not only atThe Iliadbut at our own ways of telling stories about the past and the present, and at how anger and hatred play out in our societies. "[28]

In July 2024, Barker was elected as an honoraryFellow of the British Academy.[21]

Personal life

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In 1969, she was introduced, in a pub, toDavid Barker,a zoology professor and neurologist 20 years her senior, who left his marriage to live with her. They had two children together, and were married in 1978, after his divorce. Their daughter Anna Barker Ralph is a novelist. Barker was widowed when her husband died in January 2009.[29]

List of works

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References

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  1. ^"All the Booker Winners Ranked & Rated".Eyes on the Prize.15 June 2021.Retrieved14 October2024.
  2. ^abcdefghijJaggi, Maya(15 August 2003)."Dispatches from the front".The Guardian.
  3. ^"Pat Barker".British Council Literature.British Council.Retrieved26 January2016.
  4. ^abKemp, Peter (1 July 2007)."Pat Barker's last battle? War has been her greatest obsession – and it looms large in her new novel".The Sunday Times.Archived fromthe originalon 4 July 2008.
  5. ^Brannigan, John (2005).Pat Barker: Contemporary British Novelists.Manchester University Press. pp. xi and 6.ISBN978-0-7190-6577-4.
  6. ^"Celebrated Alumni: UK",www.lse.ac.uk(2007)Retrieved 17 January 2008.
  7. ^Stivers, Valerie (2018)."Pat Barker, The Art of Fiction No. 243".The Paris Review.No. 227.
  8. ^abcNixon, Rob (2004)."An Interview With Pat Barker".Contemporary Literature.45(1): vi-21.doi:10.1353/cli.2004.0010.
  9. ^Gold, Ivan (2 October 1983)."North Country Women".The New York Times.
  10. ^Locke, Richard (February–March 2008)."Chums of War: Pat Barker revisits the trauma of World War I".Book Forum.
  11. ^Macmillan overview.Retrieved 25 May 2010.
  12. ^Webb, Belinda (20 November 2007)."The other Pat Barker trilogy".The Guardian.
  13. ^Pierpont, Claudia Roth (31 December 1995)."Shell Shock".New York Times Book Review.Archived fromthe originalon 10 April 2009.
  14. ^abDinnage, Rosemary (1996). "Death's gray land. (Pat Barker, literature and WW1)".The New York Review of Books.15 February 1996.
  15. ^Ezard, John (11 September 1993)."Warring fictions".The Guardian.
  16. ^Reusch, Wera."A Backdoor into the Present: An interview with Pat Barker, one of Britain's most successful novelists".Archived fromthe originalon 17 July 2016.Retrieved9 February2011.
  17. ^Barker, Pat (2008).Regeneration.Penguin Books Limited.ISBN978-0-14-190643-0.'Brilliant, intense and subtle' Peter Kemp,Sunday Times
  18. ^"The Ghost Road: 9".Publishers Weekly.4 December 1995.
  19. ^Kakutani, Michiko (29 February 2008)."Exploring Small Stories of the Great War".The New York Times.
  20. ^Lyall, Sarah (8 November 1995)."A Novel by Pat Barker Wins the Booker Prize".The New York Times.
  21. ^abCarola Dibbell,"Work Ethics",Voice Literary Supplement,October 1981.
  22. ^Skidelsky, William (13 May 2012)."The 10 best historical novels".The Observer.Guardian Media Group.Retrieved13 May2012.
  23. ^"Honoray graduate cumulative list"(PDF).open.ac.uk.
  24. ^Lee, Hermione (10 August 2012)."Toby's Room by Pat Barker – review".The Guardian.Retrieved20 August2018.
  25. ^"Toby's Room, By Pat Barker".The Independent.Archivedfrom the original on 25 May 2022.Retrieved20 August2018.
  26. ^Flood, Alison (28 April 2019)."Feminist retellings of history dominate 2019 Women's prize shortlist".The Guardian.ISSN0261-3077.Retrieved1 November2019.
  27. ^Murphy, Siobhan (18 August 2018)."Review: The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker — sex slave of the Trojan war".The Times.ISSN0140-0460.Retrieved1 November2019.
  28. ^Wilson, Emily (22 August 2018)."The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker review – a feminist Iliad".The Guardian.ISSN0261-3077.Retrieved1 November2019.
  29. ^Davies, Hannah (30 January 2010)."Novelist Pat Barker".The Journal.

Further reading

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  • Monteith, Sharon (2001).Pat Barker(1. publ. ed.). Devon: Northcote House.ISBN978-0-7463-0900-1.
  • Monteith, Sharon; Jolly, Margaretta; Yousaf, Nahem; et al. (2005).Critical perspectives on Pat Barker.Columbia (S.C.): University of South Carolina press.ISBN1-57003-570-9.
  • Rawlinson, Mark (2008).Pat Barker.New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-0-230-00180-0.
  • Brannigan, John (2005).Pat Barker.Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press.ISBN0-7190-6576-3.
  • Waterman, David (2009).Pat Barker and the mediation of social reality.Amherst, New York: Cambria Press.ISBN978-1-60497-649-6.
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