Rating: 4/5
Review:
Very good - eventually
This is the third volume in a trilogy and it helps
enormously to have read the previous two, Life Class and Toby's Room. Even though this one begins in 1940, a long
time after Toby's Room, and it can be read as a stand-alone book, the histories
of the three main characters, Elinor, Paul and Kit are very important.
Noonday is their story during the Blitz in 1940 and early 1941. I have to say that I found the first half of
the book a bit of a struggle. In many
ways it is very good: there are some excellent evocations of life during the
Blitz including the sheer grinding exhaustion of it, and Pat Barker has a
wonderful, almost forensically accurate eye for the nuances of relationships
and the way in which people talk or don't talk to each other. Her prose is precise and elegant, but narrative
is rather disjointedly episodic and there are also some less successful
aspects, like the episode with a medium, all of which made it rather hard going
for me,
However, I found the last third or so excellent. The interactions of the characters, the
intensity of the Blitz and the general atmosphere all combined to produce
something gripping and very memorable.
The slight feeling of slogging through the first half was well worth it
for this, and if this isn't one of Barker's greatest books, it is still very
well worth reading,
(I received a free ARC via Netgalley.)
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