Not as strong as it might have been - Rated 
I was excited to learn of a new Pat Barker novel set during World War One, a subject she writes about so movingly. Unfortunately, I found "Life Class" only half-great, and the main problem was that I simply didn't care enough about the characters. Barker's extraordinary protrayal of both fictional and real-life characters in the "Regeneration" trilogy was one of the series' undoubted high-points, but it is sadly not replicated in this novel, where the characters just seem too shallow to warrant the reader's empathy. Most of the time they seem, quite frankly, rather annoying.
On the plus side, "Life Class" contains some astonishingly good writing - Barker's wonderful command of language and her ability to paint vivid scenes with a few words remain undiminished. As I read the book, I suspected that the best work would come in the scenes at the Front, and this proved to be the case. Barker's stark conjuring of a hellish world where violence and death are the norm is handled with great elan. It is in these chapters where she comes closest to the whole point of the novel, which is ordinary young people thrust into extraordinary historical circumstances.
So, I found the opening and closing episodes of this novel not as gripping as they might have been, but it is still worth reading if just for Barker's marvellous writing style and her evergreen respect and compassion for that sad, haunting "Lost Generation".
Not Her Usual High Standards - Rated
I believe I have read all of Pat Barker's published works including the oft mentioned, "Regeneration Trilogy". I think it is unfair to make a comparison to that series of books, as many would rightfully argue it is her best work.
"Life Class" suffers from weak and in some cases characters that are too easily disliked. Well-drawn characters that a reader enjoys rooting against can be a great part of any work. In this case I found myself dreading the reappearance of certain players. This book like some of her others deals with desire and the mess that war can make of relationships. What this book fails to do is motivate the reader to care about the relationships and the people that comprise them. These people are mostly shallow, insufferably selfish, and naïve to the point of being unbelievable.
Pat Barker is a wonderful writer and she has a list of work that any author would envy. By all means read her work including this offering. You would be well advised to start with her earlier work and then eventually arrive at "Life Class". No author is perfectly consistent however if you start here you may not find the interest to read more of her work and that would be a shame.
"Leave your [deleted] compassion at the door, it's no use to anyone here." - Rated 
Pat Barker's sensitive exploration of the devastating effects of The Great War on a group of artists from the Slade School of Art complements her similar exploration of the Great War from the point of view of the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in her Regeneration Trilogy, for which she won the 1995 Booker Prize. Examining the lives of art students Paul Tarrant, Elinor Brooke, and Kit Neville as they learn their craft, celebrate life by partying in the days leading up to the war, and eventually make life-altering decisions when war breaks out, Barker creates three worlds, the Before, During, and After of the war.
The superficiality of life Before, the horrors of During, and the disillusionment of After develop here through the interactions of these three characters with each other as the world around them changes--war as a Life Class. When Germany invades Russia and advances on France, Neville and Paul volunteer to drive ambulances for the Belgian Red Cross, and when Richard Lewis, a Quaker recruit becomes Paul's unexpected roommate in Ypres, Paul finds a studio in town where he can draw, and gain a little privacy. Lewis is as appalled as Paul is by the fact that there is no hospital, just a series of huts built around a goods yard, where doctors and nurses have no anesthetics, medications, or disinfectant, and where men lie on straw mats.
When Elinor naively decides to visit Paul, she arrives in Ypres only to have a sudden bombardment send her scurrying back home. In her first letter to Paul after her return home, she urges Paul to take a leave and return to England. "It would be lovely...to go for a meal or [have] toasted crumpets by the fire."
Barker's imagery is vibrant and affecting, and her ability to show the reactions of callow young people to the horrors they see is memorable. Because she shows the same characters at three stages of their lives from 1914 through the war, the reader shares their changes and, in most cases, growth. The limitation of the book, however, may be that some readers will not care about the main characters as much as they want to, simply because the characters are so shallow and so young. The lives they lead in England are superficial lives, and the horrors of Ypres are so horrific that in many ways the young characters do not seem to comprehend them fully. Compartmentalizing is one thing, necessary for survival, but the long-term postwar effects on the characters who return are not examined fully, and those effects might have been the bigger story here. Mary Whipple
Does Life Emulate Art or the Reverse? - Rated
Pat Barker takes three shallow English artists and drops them into the turmoil of World War I as a way of capturing the war's full horror. Elinor Brooke shows promise as an art student and wants to pursue painting rather than fulfill the traditional roles of wife and mother. Young men, including Paul Tarrant (a struggling beginner at art school) and Kit Neville (a painter who is beginning to attract notice), are attracted to her as a woman and don't take her artistic future all that seriously (even though they think her work is good).
Prior to the start of the war, Tarrant is trying to decide if he should drop out of school . . . and finds that charms of a married model, Teresa Halliday, who is separated from her husband to be the best part of his life. But being Halliday's lover has its challenges as well.
The war changes everything as pressure is put on men to either join the military to volunteer for noncombatant roles. Neville and Tarrant volunteer to serve in the ambulance corps in Belgium. Tarrant's life there challenges all of his views about his commitment to art and what the role of art is. Through correspondence with Brooke, their relationship develops and we see how the war changes both of them. As Tarrant's and Neville's lives intersect, we see how choices affect the lives we lead. Neville's commitment to his career keeps him from taking the war commitment very seriously. Tarrant finds that the war commitment changes everything.
Brooke finds herself being pressured to play traditional women's roles during the war, and her artistic commitment also protects her from being swallowed up by the war.
The part of the book that rises above the average is where Ms. Barker lets her characters loose in Belgium during the battles. In a sense, the rest of the novel is merely prelude and epilogue. Ms. Barker's writing about the war experience is very fine.
Her antiwar message is simple: Without commitment to civilizing activities and values we will be caught up on the mindless gravity of war and barbarized. Life would be better if it imitated art more often.
I was impressed by her choice of a real character to play a role in the book, Henry Tooks, a surgeon who had become an artist and art teacher. Due to the war, Tooks found a most remarkable way to combine his talents by drawing portraits of how plastic surgery could be used on mutilated soldiers. I suspect that a story about Tooks would have been even more interesting than this one.
I haven't read any of Ms. Barker's other works, but I doubt if she won a Booker Prize for writing at this level. If you haven't read The Regeneration Trilogy, perhaps you would do better to start there. I wish I had.
I thought that her writing was quite good, but her plotting was ponderous. Pretty much everything that happens is predictable. I found myself wondering if I should bother finishing the story after I got the point she wanted to make.
Does Life Emulate Art or the Reverse? - Rated
Pat Barker takes three shallow English artists and drops them into the turmoil of World War I as a way of capturing the war's full horror. Elinor Brooke shows promise as an art student and wants to pursue painting rather than fulfill the traditional roles of wife and mother. Young men, including Paul Tarrant (a struggling beginner at art school) and Kit Neville (a painter who is beginning to attract notice), are attracted to her as a woman and don't take her artistic future all that seriously (even though they think her work is good).
Prior to the start of the war, Tarrant is trying to decide if he should drop out of school . . . and finds that charms of a married model, Teresa Halliday, who is separated from her husband to be the best part of his life. But being Halliday's lover has its challenges as well.
The war changes everything as pressure is put on men to either join the military to volunteer for noncombatant roles. Neville and Tarrant volunteer to serve in the ambulance corps in Belgium. Tarrant's life there challenges all of his views about his commitment to art and what the role of art is. Through correspondence with Brooke, their relationship develops and we see how the war changes both of them. As Tarrant's and Neville's lives intersect, we see how choices affect the lives we lead. Neville's commitment to his career keeps him from taking the war commitment very seriously. Tarrant finds that the war commitment changes everything.
Brooke finds herself being pressured to play traditional women's roles during the war, and her artistic commitment also protects her from being swallowed up by the war.
The part of the book that rises above the average is where Ms. Barker lets her characters loose in Belgium during the battles. In a sense, the rest of the novel is merely prelude and epilogue. Ms. Barker's writing about the war experience is very fine.
Her antiwar message is simple: Without commitment to civilizing activities and values we will be caught up on the mindless gravity of war and barbarized. Life would be better if it imitated art more often.
I was impressed by her choice of a real character to play a role in the book, Henry Tooks, a surgeon who had become an artist and art teacher. Due to the war, Tooks found a most remarkable way to combine his talents by drawing portraits of how plastic surgery could be used on mutilated soldiers. I suspect that a story about Tooks would have been even more interesting than this one.
I haven't read any of Ms. Barker's other works, but I doubt if she won a Booker Prize for writing at this level. If you haven't read The Regeneration Trilogy, perhaps you would do better to start there. I wish I had.
I thought that her writing was quite good, but her plotting was ponderous. Pretty much everything that happens is predictable. I found myself wondering if I should bother finishing the story after I got the point she wanted to make.
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