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The quaint English village of Barker's 10th novel is a world away from the wars in Bosnia, Afghanistan and elsewhere that have scarred its main characters, but the specter of violence still looms. Kate Frobisher, a sculptor working on a monumental figure of Jesus, is recovering from a car accident and grieving for her husband, Ben, a war photographer killed in Afghanistan. Stephen Sharkey, a journalist (and friend of Ben's) suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome after covering Bosnia, Rwanda and other conflicts, has left London and a failed marriage to write a book about "the way wars are represented." An ensemble cast gathers around these two haunted figures: Stephen's brother Robert and his family; Alec Braithewaite, the friendly vicar, and his Cambridge-bound daughter Justine; and Peter Wingrave, Kate's studio assistant and Justine's ex. A predictable mix of domestic drama (the Sharkeys' marital woes, a romance between Stephen and Justine) plays out against the backdrop of current events, but the real theme of this insightful, harrowing novel is violence: its impact on victims, but also on those who witness it and those who tell the tale. As Barker's characters are forced to acknowledge, aggression and brutality are close at hand. And Barker spares no unsettling effect animals are turned into bloody heaps of roadkill; Kate grows paranoid about solitary Peter; Justine is the victim of a terrible beating. The effect of such unrelenting darkness is to render the story less dramatic and convincing, but this is still a gripping novel, noteworthy for the author's gifts as a stylist and her formidable, engaged intelligence.
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Kate Frobisher is a recently widowed sculptor, who, temporarily crippled by a car accident, is forced to employ help to complete a fifteen-foot sculpture of Christ. Nearby lives a colleague of her late husband, a foreign correspondent who is taking a break from Bosnia and Afghanistan to write a book about "ways of representing war." In his downtime, he philosophizes with Kate about voyeurism and human suffering. There are flashes in Barker's tenth novel of the electrifying prose that readers have come to expect from her. But its central preoccupation, with social and moral vision, is shamelessly heavy-handed, and the novel is further encumbered by a jumble of lacklustre minor characters and grand themes.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
One doesn't often find the caliber of writing displayed in Barker's latest, a compulsively readable novel whose lofty themes include the costs of being emotionally vulnerable and the role of art in dangerous times. Seemingly effortlessly, Barker creates a charged atmosphere of heightened emotions and physical danger as she immerses readers in the world of grieving widow Kate Frosbisher. Her husband, Ben, a photojournalist, has been killed in Afghanistan, and she knows with implacable certainty that she will never recover from this loss; she can only try to learn to live with it. Her husband's partner, Stephen Sharkey, is also mourning Ben's death but has been doubly devastated upon learning of his wife's adultery. When Stephen settles into a cottage in the British countryside near Kate, they learn that the comforts of a rural retreat can be illusory after an accident, a robbery, and a beating shatter their attempts to heal. Barker herself denies readers the comfort of a tidy plot resolution, intentionally underscoring the chaos that lurks just beneath the civilized veneer of modern life. Joanne Wilkinson
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