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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i really liked this book. it was really well written and had good themes about life, artistic inspiration, war, and love. elinor was an awesomely dynamic character. i would recommend this book to anyone
dark
funny
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail
A moving portrait of how war affects everything. The novel follows students of a life class - hey that's the name of the book - as WWI begins. Elinor fights against the war's ever presence in life while Paul and Kit join the war efforts any way possible. It is told through alternating perspectives and partially through letters. It is quite breath taking. Barker manages to cover a lot of ground in this compact novel.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Life Class by Pat Barker 🎨 🌟🌟🌟🌟
🎨 The plot: It's spring, 1914. Paul Tarrant is a student at the Slade School of Art in London, where a harsh critique from a tutor in his life drawing class shakes his faith in his talent and what he has to offer the world. When war breaks out on the continent, he enlists with the Belgian Red Cross just as he and a fellow student, Elinor Brooke, admit their feelings for each other. The devastation Paul witnesses at Ypres gives him a new perspective that benefits his art, but has the war changed Paul - and his relationship with Elinor - forever?
This book was a pleasant surprise! I picked it up spontaneously at The Bookstore Cafe in the Hague on my first visit here for my job interview and ended up totally hooked. I find the world wars and the periods around them really fascinating, and especially since the pandemic I've appreciated books that capture the feeling of living normal life in the shadow of approaching disaster, so this had a lot to interest me!
I've never read any of Barker's other books so I don't have much to compare this to but I really enjoyed the writing and found it appropriately vivid for a book about painters. I did feel ambushed by quite an alarming sex scene in the first third - suddenly! from nowhere! a purple penis! - but I recovered and overall really loved this one!
🎨 Read it if you love novels about artists, prewar London, or the first world war generally.
🚫 Avoid it if the purple penis would be too much for you 💀 and if violence/bloodshed isn't your thing, the war scenes aren't especially gory but it's worth bearing in mind!
🎨 The plot: It's spring, 1914. Paul Tarrant is a student at the Slade School of Art in London, where a harsh critique from a tutor in his life drawing class shakes his faith in his talent and what he has to offer the world. When war breaks out on the continent, he enlists with the Belgian Red Cross just as he and a fellow student, Elinor Brooke, admit their feelings for each other. The devastation Paul witnesses at Ypres gives him a new perspective that benefits his art, but has the war changed Paul - and his relationship with Elinor - forever?
This book was a pleasant surprise! I picked it up spontaneously at The Bookstore Cafe in the Hague on my first visit here for my job interview and ended up totally hooked. I find the world wars and the periods around them really fascinating, and especially since the pandemic I've appreciated books that capture the feeling of living normal life in the shadow of approaching disaster, so this had a lot to interest me!
I've never read any of Barker's other books so I don't have much to compare this to but I really enjoyed the writing and found it appropriately vivid for a book about painters. I did feel ambushed by quite an alarming sex scene in the first third - suddenly! from nowhere! a purple penis! - but I recovered and overall really loved this one!
🎨 Read it if you love novels about artists, prewar London, or the first world war generally.
🚫 Avoid it if the purple penis would be too much for you 💀 and if violence/bloodshed isn't your thing, the war scenes aren't especially gory but it's worth bearing in mind!
Good story about art and love during WWI England. Raises some interesting questions, such as "What is art?" and "What should and should not be the subjects of art?" I was especially drawn to the protagonist's struggle to remain an artist and create while actively participating in the war. Barker depicts the opposite struggle just as well--the protagonist's girlfriend, safely tucked away in Bloomsbury, rejects the war and everything surrounding it, creating an insulated reality from which "pleasant art" is made. Very well written novel and a quick read.
I love the [b: Regeneration|5872|Regeneration (Regeneration, #1)|Pat Barker|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1365925619l/5872._SX50_.jpg|9250] trilogy so much, but I just can’t get into Barker’s other work. Her latest novel struck me as weirdly unfocused: the first half follows Paul through art school and various romantic assignations, including a quasi love triangle thing; I didn’t find it particularly compelling. Even after Paul goes to war as an ambulance driver and hospital worker, I couldn’t latch on—I was never at all invested or even particularly interested in Paul and Elinor as a couple, and I felt at times that I was reading the notes for the novel, instead of the finished thing. At one point, for example, Paul thinks about how much he’d come to love a fallen comrade, and all I could think was—what? When did that happen? We’re never shown, and I found it frustrating that so much of the action—the emotional action, even—was taking place off screen.
I don’t know. The Regeneration books are still really, incredibly good. This just...isn’t.
I don’t know. The Regeneration books are still really, incredibly good. This just...isn’t.
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No