Noonday - The Life Class Trilogy (Paperback)
Pat Barker (author)Published: 07/04/2016
From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls
The final novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - an unforgettable story of art and war, from one of our greatest writers on war and the human heart
'Bold, hard-hitting, unforgettable, with luminous and unsparing insight' Independent on Sunday
'Barker's command of detail and gift for metaphor are as sharp as ever... Noonday is in the first rank' Mail on Sunday
'[There is] no end to her talent in describing how conflicts rupture the soul' Arifa Akbar, Independent
London, the Blitz, autumn 1940. As the bombs fall on the blacked-out city, ambulance driver Elinor Brooke races from bomb sites to hospitals trying to save the lives of injured survivors, working alongside former friend Kit Neville, while her husband Paul works as an air-raid warden. As the bombing intensifies, the constant risk of death makes all three of them reach out for quick consolation. Old loves and obsessions re-surface until Elinor is brought face to face with an almost impossible choice. Writing about the Second World War for the first time, Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London into electrifying life.
The Life Class trilogy:
Life Class
Toby's Room
Noonday
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241966037
Number of pages: 272
Weight: 191 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 17 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Publisher's description. Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of Blitz-era London to electrifying life in Noonday, the third and final novel in her 'Life Class Trilogy'. Bombs are falling on London and, still suffering from the losses of the Great War, Elinor, Paul and Kit must face war's horrors once again... - Penguin
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
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“Very good - eventually”
This is the third volume in a trilogy and it helps enormously to have read the previous two, Life Class and Toby's Room. Even though this one begins in 1940, a long time after Toby's Room, and it can be... More
“London during the blitz”
I have been held by this book from the first few words. It's an era that I am haunted by so it was a natural choice. However, I do have issues with it - the style of the dialogue and attitudes seem at times to... More
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