Toby's Room by Pat Barker

Toby's Room by Pat Barker
Buy Toby's Room by Pat Barker at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Literary Fiction
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: Pat Barker returns to the First World War in this superbly written but very readable book. Highly recommended.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 272	Date: August 2012
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-0241144572
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Elinor Brooke and her brother Toby had always been close but one day their relationship became more intimate than is acceptable. The trick then, as Toby said, was to get back to how their relationship was before. Toby concentrated on calling her 'sis', whilst Elinor was never quite certain how they could turn the clock back to a time when they were more innocent. But looking back, the summer of 1912 would seem idyllic: in 1917 Toby was reported 'Missing, Believed Killed'. Elinor was determined to find out how Toby died and her one route to this knowledge was Kit Neville who was a fellow student of hers at the Slade School of Art and who was in the fox hole when Toby met his fate.

Where World War I is concerned, you know that you're in safe hands with Pat Barker. It's difficult to think of anyone who has their finger so firmly on the pulse of the time, who understands how people felt. She doesn't engage to any great extent with the action on the battlefields, but neither does she ignore it. Her focus is primarily on the men and how the war affected them, how it exacerbated what was there before. She was brilliant in Regeneration and if anything she's even better in Toby's Room.

She has the same talent of being able to probe under the skin of a relationship, to pinpoint that moment when it's changing form. Elinor Brooke is a great character and Barker captures not so much the essence of her as the contradictions. Some people thought that she and Toby were twins, but although Toby was a twin, the twin was not Elinor. Others even suggested that she was more like a widow, without quite understanding what might lie behind the thought.

There's a contradiction in the form of the book too. Literary fiction is frequently unreadable unless you're a part of the literati for whom it is written. There's no doubting the quality of Toby's Room and equally it's one of the most readable books which have come my way in a while, but by no stretch of the imagination can it be called an easy read. Kit Neville suffers a facial injury and Elinor is involved - as war work, despite her hatred of the war - in drawing injuries. Barker never slips into the gruesome but the descriptions of the injuries and of the reactions of the men who suffer them are particularly moving.

It's now several days since I finished reading the book, but I've needed a little distance before I could even attempt to do justice to it. It's a book I'll return to - even looking back at the text for this review has tempted me to read further than I intended. It is - as few books really are - a keeper. I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

If you haven't read Regeneration you really should. For a literary look at the second World War you might appreciate Restless by William Boyd.

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