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| Life Class | 
 enlarge | Author: Pat Barker
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 2675
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0141019476
EAN: 9780141019475
ASIN: 0141019476
Publication Date: August 7, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
art of war and war of art November 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
'They'd been drawing for over half an hour. There was no sound except for the skimming of pencils on Michallet paper or the barely perceptible squeak of charcoal.' Barker is masterly at evoking time and place and here she moves from the life class at the Slade to the life class of WW1. The characters in the novel are of different social classes and this impacts their approach to art and the role they take in the conflict.
It's also a love story - of star crossed lovers whose lives become very different because of the war. One character does become an artist but is not commercially successful, one becomes a satellite of the Boomsbury group. The tone is essentially melancholic - dashed ambitions and couples in bed making love but we know they won't be living happily ever after.
 Also disappointed October 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As a big fan of Pat Barker's previous work - especially the excellent Regeneration trilogy - I too was attracted to this book because of the return to the ground of former glories. So it was with keen anticipation that I bought it.
What a disappointment. The book completely failed to engage in the manner of Regeneration, which had me hooked from page 1, line 1.
The overriding emotion at the end of this was "So what?"
The examination of the relevance of art in wartime was unsatisfying and skin deep - my impression was that Barker does not know enough about the subject to get properly to grips with it. And an odd choice for one of the central themes.
The characters were anaemic. She seems to have lost that surefootedness when dealing with male characters - one recalls Billy Prior and Rivers - for Tarrant, Neville and Lewis just don't convince or happen. What is Lewis there for? He is cardboard cutout man.
And the correspondence between Elinor and Tarrant meandered along without getting anywhere. It was almost as if she could not bear the idea of them falling out.
This book could have taken so many other more satisfying routes. I found I did not care that much about anyone.
Sorry Pat - not in the same league as your previous WW1 work.
 Thank you, Pat Barker September 21, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this book. Pat Barker knows her period well, but she never lets the weight of her research overpower the writing. This reader was drawn in from the first page (I'd put her in the Deborah Moggach class for the ability to hook the reader and make you really care about the characters and want to know what happens to them). Kit Neville is a bit of a cipher, but Paul Tarrant and Elinor are wholly rounded, alive and memorable. There were times when I had to put the book down for a while, so vivid and hard to bear was the pain. And yet, in the end, it's a story of love -- especially love of life -- and determination. The ending is perfect.
A different look at WW1 from the Regeneration author September 21, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am a big Pat Barker fan, having relished the Regeneration trilogy of books about the treatment of survivors of the horrors of the trenches, and I also enjoyed this novel which gives a different take on the horrors of war as seen through the eyes of the people who worked behind the front lines in the casualty clearing stations. It is not as well rounded as The Ghost Road or The Eye in the Door, but it still makes the reader reflect on the debate about art and life. Paul Tarrant's struggle with what to paint in the war is described by Barker and a look at Henry Tonk's paintings shows you two very different types of subject. The book is split into two halves and it was the second that captured my imagination most strongly, where Paul goes behind the front lines as an ambulance driver. There are some powerfully written vignettes of bombing raids and its effects on men and horses and the passage where Paul himself is injured is tremendously well conveyed. All in all I would recommend this book if you are interested in reading about WW1 and its effects on people's lives.
Disappointed September 8, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I haven't read a Barker novel since 'The Ghost Road', and was attracted to this by the notices, which said it was her best effort since that novel. A return to familiar territory, it begins just as WW1 is about to begin, at London's Slade School of Art. Paul Tarrant, a Northerner who is living from an inheritance fund, entertains grave doubts about his artistic abilities. He becomes infatuated with a fellow student Elinor, but begins an affair with Teresa, an artist's model. When war breaks out, Paul tries to enlist, is refused on health grounds, but joins up as a medical orderly. Paul and Elinor becomes lovers and she joins him, briefly, for a few days in the town of Ypres, just as the town is bombarded. When Elinor returns, she becomes an associate of the anti-war Bloomsbury set, while Paul encounters the horror of the front, and is wounded. He returns to London, where he and Elinor negotiate the nature of their relationship.
Although I kept reading to the end, I remained unsatisfied by this novel. Barker has covered this ground before, so I could not see the point of the story, except perhaps as the pretext of a rather half-hearted meditation upon the role of art in times of war. (In the novel, Paul paints the horror he sees, while Elinor refuses to do so, insisting that such horrors entrap the 'true' nature of life.) After touching upon such topics, the novel just seems to stop, as if the author had simply abandoned it - in the same way that a number of the characters simply abandon their paintings and drawings. Have I failed to pick up on something here? The problem is that the book does not give me enough motivation to attempt to think it through...well-written enough, and good for a journey, or a wet weekend, but not a corker.
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