Acquire Today Tobys Room Penned By Pat Barker Issued As Pamphlet

quite compelling read that I struggled to put down, It combines dark,family secrets with the horrors of the First World War and the intimacy of love and loss.
Elinor, a budding artist is extremely close to her older brother Toby, and when the family recieves news that Toby is "Missing, Believed Killed", Elinor's safe world of just ignoring the war is shattered.
She becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Toby, and seeks the help of various old friends including Kit Neville, a fellow artist who was with her brother at the end.
Kit has subsequently been hideously wounded and is at a specialist hospital for facial reconstruction in Kent but for some unknown reason is refusing to help.
Elinor thus starts work as a surgical artist to get closer to Kit and to try to persuade him to divulge the information she so craves.
This novel is beautifully written and is a memorable addition to Pat Barkers previous work, Genius!!! So special and great!!!!
sitelinkRegenerationstars
sitelinkLife Classstars
sitelinkToby's Room TBR
sitelinkNoonday TBR I don't usually bother finishing a book I'm not enjoying it's my way of making sure reading remains my favourite thing to do, I suppose but I have such admiration for Pat Barker's writing that I felt a sense of duty to complete this.


The Regeneration trilogy are among my favourite novels, and I think Barker's unflinchingness a far better treatment of World War One that Faulks' more decorous approach in Birdsong.
I also enjoyed her subsequent novels, Another World and Border Crossing, Toby's Room, however, left me dissatisfied, I felt that there was a lot of repetition of ideas, rather than exploration and development of ideas, which didn't move on beyond their introduction.
The characters are hard to warm to or even to dislike,

As always with Barker, there are some beautiful, and unexpectedly brutal, metaphors although she rather spelt things out once the metaphor was in place, which is disappointing.


Pat Barker's new book, "Toby's Room" is considered to be a sequel to "Life Class, " Yet, although I didn't care for "Life Class," I found this to be much better and could be read without having read the first book.
Not as good as her "Regeneration Trilogy," it also takes place during WWI with a bit of incest, homosexuality, painting, disfigurement and secrets added to the mix.
None of the characters are very likeable though I enjoyed

reading about Henry Tonks, the real life surgeon who became a famous painter and teacher.


I wonder if this is Barker's last book about the War, I hope not. I actually enjoyed this more than Life Class though that was beautifully written and gripping too, because the character of Elinor is so well drawn.
She is complex and fascinating, I felt huge sympathy for her in her confusion, The final chapters with Paul and Kit were also extraordinary, An engaging love story. The characters felt real.

Barker is such a good writer, very economical but direct, Highly recommend. Pat Barker tackles another World War I tale with Toby's Room, The story revolves around Elinor's quest to find out how her brother Toby died in the war, I adored the Regeneration Trilogy and perhaps that's why I was so disappointed in this book,

There were a few major problems that I had with Toby's Room, First, the character of Elinor never grabbed my interest, She seemed aloof and although it was clear she loved her brother I never quite felt it, Toby also was a complete mystery to me, The other characters, Kit and Paul, were much stronger, but this didn't save the book since the story focused on Elinor and her brother.
I was also annoyed by the incest theme, I didn't quite understand why it was included in the story, Barker throws the incest into the book so early that we don't understand the motivation behind it, In fact I never understood what drove Toby and Elinor together, Were we to think that Toby's advances towards his sister were an attempt to fight his gay tendencies or was the incident something that drove him towards men I just didn't get it.
I feel the book would have been better if she had cut the incest thread altogether and instead fleshed out the relationship between Elinor and Toby.


Despite its problems, the book was quite riveting when it got rolling and that's why it gets three instead of two.
Barker once again injects realism into her novel by having the war artist Henry Tonks as Elinor's art teacher.
I'm not sure this worked quite as well as it did in the Regeneration Trilogy, but it was still an interesting inclusion.
This is a book for a stark, rainy day and a cup of steaming hot tea, The whole book is somber and bleak, as of course it should be considering the topic, Toby's Room is Pat Barker's second book it could easily be read alone, but I recommend reading Life Class first about three young British art students whose lives are ravaged by World War I.
This novel takes place after the two men are back in London, dealing with injuries of both the physical and psychological nature, struggling to find a handhold in the world they're left with.
The biggest focus is on headstrong, introverted Elinor, who I liked much better in this book than the first.
Her character is multifaceted and complex, as is her brother Toby, even though he really only appears in flashbacks and recollections of other characters.
Elinor is at times withdrawn and deeply reticent, and other times moves through life like a woman possessed, Possessed both by her terrierlike determination to unravel the whole horrible truth of her brother's death, and by the raw, gaping wound she carries as a result of that loss.
Their relationship is incredibly complex, and Pat Barker is always willing to take her characters down some very dark paths.


I hope that Barker continues to write books about World War I era England, because she brilliantly captures not only the horror but the myriad of fractures, unraveled threads, and rippleeffects that exist throughout the whole lives of a generation shaped by such a war.
It touches everything and everyone, and her characters are all so nuanced, all so genuinely human, I still maintain that the three books of her Regeneration Trilogy are some of the best ever written about the era, and about war in general.
While Toby's Room is not quite to that level, it has its own power and left an ache in my heart.

Toby's Room is the latest excellent novel by Pat Barker, I have read most of Pat Barker's novels and they never fail to satisfy, Barker creates interesting characters and her best works the Regeneration Trilogyoccur during the First World War, In these books and in Toby's Room her fictional characters interact with actual historical figures in coming to grips with the horrors of modern warfare.
Barker writes less about battles and combat and more about the impact of those conflicts on combatants and their families and lovers living in Great Britain at the same time.

Barker also depicts how the war occurred during a time of major societal change as the class and social mores of Victorian England were shaken to their foundations.


Toby's Room is in some ways a sequel to Life Class featuring many of the same characters.
However i believe the books need not be read in tandem, Toby's Room stands on its own,

The principle characters in Toby's Room are Toby Brook a military doctor, his Sister Eleanor an artist and Kit Neville and Paul Tarrant, wounded World War I veterans and artists like Eleanor.
Toby is an enigma, although his presence and absence drives the plot,


The most in teresting element of the novel to me was not the sexual tensions and behavior of various charactersalbeit that was intriguging but the descriptions of medical treatment for soldiers horribly scarred by the war.
Kit Neville is one such victim and the nightmare of being grotesquely wounded and coping with the stigma of such an injury was moving and fascinating.


Pat Barker is an excellent novelist, Anyone who enjoys serious literature should try her books, Toby's Room is a great place to start, I liked it. I would argue that it is not really a "war" book, Nor, is it really all that much about the new for the time science of facial reconstruction, This is a book about burgeoning sexuality and relationships between people then again, isn't everything ultimately about relationships between people.


Barker sets the hook early with the scene between Elinor and Toby and then gently reveals the effects of that night over the rest of their lives.
She never quite comes back to it if only I could be one of those Brits that are quietly suffering so believably unable to discuss anything despite: "it wasn't an incident, it was a catastrophe that had ripped a hole in the middle of her life.
". I wasn't sure that Toby's preference for men and Kit's blatant homophobia wasn't too offensive, Are we really to assume that since his sister was not really available, no other woman would suffice

Elinor, herself, was a great, strong character.
She is guilty and willing to take the blame for her night with Toby, but she also understands the unfairness of it: "That made her angry too: the cool, rational, accepted explanation which emphasized her weakness, not his.
" She is as much like he, as he is like her both tending towards genderneutral, if you will, but of course the strong woman is preferred to the weak man.
I did not like that Toby had a missing twin that just felt too cheap as a way to explain the connection between them.


I did like the relationship between Paul and Kit especially "Paul had never had such a strange, unquantifiable relationship with anybody else.
Even now, after years of admittedly intermittent contact, he'd have hesitated to call Neville a friend and yet nobody mattered more.
There was nobody whom he so persistently measured himself against, " It is not just a rivalry between the two, it is also an understanding and appreciation between,

The dynamics between the men and women and the siblings were interesting and deep nothing was clear or obvious.
Even Elinor and Catherine were not completely defined, At one point, Catherine answers the door only partly dressed and she and Elinor are entwined on the sofa.
Again, as Elinor takes on the masculine role it is possible that she and Catherine were also having an affair.


Overall, it was compelling and well done, I'm not sure about some of the biases, but a book that makes me think and question its assumptions is always better than one that doesn't.
.