Items related to Noonday (Life Class Trilogy)
London, the Blitz, Autumn 1940. As the bombs fall on the blacked-out city, ambulance driver Elinor Brooke races from bomb sites to hospitals in order to save the lives of injured survivors. She works alongside former friend Kit Neville while her husband, Paul Tarrant, works as an air-raid warden. Into their midst comes the spirit medium Bertha Mason, grotesque and unforgettable, whose ability to make contact with the deceased finds vastly increased demand as death rains down from the skies. And as old loves and obsessions resurface, Elinor is brought face-to-face with an almost impossible choice.
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About the Author:
Pat Barker is one of England's most important contemporary novelists. The books in her Regeneration Trilogy won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Booker Prize. She lives in England and was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2000.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
CHAPTER ONE:
Elinor was halfway up the drive when she sensed she was being watched. She stopped and scanned the upstairs windows—wide open in the heat as if the house were gasping for breath—but there was nobody looking down. Then, from the sycamore tree at the end of the gar- den, came a rustling of leaves. Oh, of course: Kenny. She was tempted to ignore him, but that seemed unkind, so she went across the lawn and peered up into the branches.
“Kenny?”
No reply. There was often no reply.
Kenny had arrived almost a year ago now, among the first batch of evacuees, and, although this area had since been reclassified—“neutral” rather than “safe”—here he remained. She felt his gaze heavy on the top of her head, like a hand, as she stood squinting up into the late-afternoon sunlight.
Kenny spent hours up there, not reading his comics, not building a tree house, not dropping conkers on people’s heads—no, just watching. He had a red notebook in which he wrote down car numbers, the time people arrived, the time they left . . . Of course, you forgot what it was like to be his age: probably every visitor was a German spy. Oh, and he ate himself, that was the other thing. He was forever nibbling his fingernails, tearing at his cuticles, picking scabs off his knees and licking up the blood. Even pulling hair out of his head and sucking it. And, despite being a year at the village school, he hadn’t made friends. But then, he was the sort of child who attracts bullying, she thought, guiltily conscious of her own failure to like him.
“Kenny? Isn’t it time for tea?”
Then, with a great crash of leaves and branches, he dropped at her feet and stood looking up at her, scowling, for all the world like a small, sour, angry crab apple.
“Where’s Paul?”
“I’m afraid he couldn’t come, he’s busy.”
“He’s always busy.”
“Well, yes, he’s got a lot to do. Are you coming in now?” Evidently that didn’t deserve a reply.
He turned his back on her and ran off through the arch into the kitchen garden.
Elinor was halfway up the drive when she sensed she was being watched. She stopped and scanned the upstairs windows—wide open in the heat as if the house were gasping for breath—but there was nobody looking down. Then, from the sycamore tree at the end of the gar- den, came a rustling of leaves. Oh, of course: Kenny. She was tempted to ignore him, but that seemed unkind, so she went across the lawn and peered up into the branches.
“Kenny?”
No reply. There was often no reply.
Kenny had arrived almost a year ago now, among the first batch of evacuees, and, although this area had since been reclassified—“neutral” rather than “safe”—here he remained. She felt his gaze heavy on the top of her head, like a hand, as she stood squinting up into the late-afternoon sunlight.
Kenny spent hours up there, not reading his comics, not building a tree house, not dropping conkers on people’s heads—no, just watching. He had a red notebook in which he wrote down car numbers, the time people arrived, the time they left . . . Of course, you forgot what it was like to be his age: probably every visitor was a German spy. Oh, and he ate himself, that was the other thing. He was forever nibbling his fingernails, tearing at his cuticles, picking scabs off his knees and licking up the blood. Even pulling hair out of his head and sucking it. And, despite being a year at the village school, he hadn’t made friends. But then, he was the sort of child who attracts bullying, she thought, guiltily conscious of her own failure to like him.
“Kenny? Isn’t it time for tea?”
Then, with a great crash of leaves and branches, he dropped at her feet and stood looking up at her, scowling, for all the world like a small, sour, angry crab apple.
“Where’s Paul?”
“I’m afraid he couldn’t come, he’s busy.”
“He’s always busy.”
“Well, yes, he’s got a lot to do. Are you coming in now?” Evidently that didn’t deserve a reply.
He turned his back on her and ran off through the arch into the kitchen garden.
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- PublisherBlackstone Audio, Inc.
- Publication date2016
- ISBN 10 150468608X
- ISBN 13 9781504686082
- BindingAudio CD
- Number of pages1
- Rating
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Noonday
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Blackstone Audio, Inc., UNITED STATES
(2016)
ISBN 10: 150468608X
ISBN 13: 9781504686082
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