Life Class Trilogy
3 primary works Complete
Book 1
Spring, 1914. A group of students at the Slade School of Art have gathered for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant is easily distracted by an intriguing fellow student, Elinor Brooke, but when Kit Neville — himself not long out of the Slade but already a well-known painter — makes it clear that he, too, is attracted to Elinor, Paul withdraws into a passionate affair with an artist’s model. As spring turns to summer, Paul and Elinor each reach a crisis in their relationships until finally, in the first few days of war, they turn to each other.
Paul’s new life as a volunteer for the Belgian Red Cross is a world away from his days at the Slade. The longer he remains in Ypres, the greater the distance between himself and home becomes, and by the time he returns, Paul must confront the fact that life, and love, will never be the same again.
Book 2
A masterfully written World War I-era novel about the secrets between a brother and sister, from the Booker Prize-winning author of the Regeneration Trilogy.
It is 1917, and Elinor Brooke, a young painter, is studying art in London while her beloved brother Toby serves on the front as a medical officer. When Toby goes missing and is presumed dead, the devastated Elinor refuses to accept it. Then she finds a letter hidden among his belongings; it reveals that Toby knew he wasn’t coming back and implies that his friend, medic Kit Neville, knows why. But Kit has been horribly disfigured and is reeling from shell shock. While Elinor tries to piece together the mystery of what happened to her brother, she uses her drawing skills to aid in the surgical reconstruction of those who have suffered unspeakable losses—of their faces, their memories, their very minds.
Book 3
In Noonday, Pat Barker - the Man Booker-winning author of the definitive WWI trilogy, Regeneration - turns for the first time to WWII.
'Afterwards, it was the horses she remembered, galloping towards them out of the orange-streaked darkness, their manes and tails on fire...'
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.
Once fellow students at the Slade School of Fine Art, before the First World War destroyed the hopes of their generation, they now find themselves caught in another war, this time at home. 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.
Completing the story of Elinor Brooke, Paul Tarrant and Kit Neville, begun with Life Class and continued with Toby's Room, Noonday is both a stand-alone novel and the climax of a trilogy. Writing about the Second World War for the first time, Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London into electrifying life in her most powerful novel since the Regeneration trilogy.
Praise for Pat Barker:
'She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature.' Independent
'A brilliant stylist... Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation.' Sunday Telegraph
'You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world.' The Guardian
'Barker is a writer of crispness and clarity and an unflinching seeker of the germ of what it means to be human." The Herald
Praise for Toby's Room:
'Heart-rending, superb, forensically observant and stylistically sublime' Independent
'Magnificent; I finished it eagerly, wanting to know what happened next, and as I read, I was enjoying, marvelling and learning' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
'Dark, painful, yet also tender. It succeeds brilliantly' New York Times
'The plot unfurls to a devastating conclusion . . . a very fine piece of work' Melvyn Bragg, New Statesman
Other titles in the trilogy:
Life Class
Toby's Room