Pat Barker | |
|---|---|
 Pat Barker in October 2012 | |
| Born | Patricia Mary W. Drake (1943-05-08)8 May 1943 (age 81) Thornaby-on-Tees, North Riding of Yorkshire, England |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Alma mater | London School of Economics |
| Subject | Memory, trauma, survival, recovery |
| Notable works | Regeneration Trilogy |
| Notable awards | Booker Prize,Guardian First Book Award |
| Spouse | David Barker |
| Children | 2 |
Patricia Mary W. BarkerCBE FRSL FBA (néeDrake; born 8 May 1943) is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. She is known for herRegeneration Trilogy, published in the 1990s, and, more recently, a series of books set during theTrojan War, starting withThe Silence of the Girls in 2018.
Patricia Mary W. Drake[1] was born on 8 May 1943[2] to a working-class family inThornaby-on-Tees in theNorth Riding of Yorkshire, England.[3] Her mother Moyra died in 2000;[2] her father's identity is unknown. According toThe Times, Moyra became pregnant "after a drunken night out while inthe Wrens." In a social climate whereillegitimacy was regarded with shame, she told people that the resulting child was her sister, rather than her daughter. They lived with Barker's grandmother Alice and step-grandfather William, until her mother married and moved out when Barker was seven.[4] Barker could have joined her mother, she toldThe Guardian in 2003, but chose to stay with her grandmother "because of love of her, and because my stepfather didn't warm to me, nor me to him."[2] Her grandparents ran afish and chip shop which failed and the family was, she toldThe Times in 2007, "poor as church mice; we were living onNational Assistance – 'on the pancrack', as my grandmother called it."[4]
At the age of eleven, Barker won a place atgrammar school, attendingKing James Grammar School inKnaresborough andGrangefield Grammar School in Stockton-on-Tees.[5]
Barker, who says she has always been an avid reader, studied international history at theLondon School of Economics from 1962-65.[6] After graduating in 1965, she returned home to nurse her grandmother, who died in 1971.
Barker has written many novels.[7] In her mid-twenties, Barker began to write fiction. Her first three novels were never published and, she toldThe Guardian in 2003, "didn't deserve to be: I was being a sensitive lady novelist, which is not what I am. There's an earthiness and bawdiness in my voice.”[2]
Her first published novel wasUnion Street (1982), which consisted of seven interlinked stories aboutEnglish working class women whose lives are circumscribed by poverty and violence.[citation needed] For ten years, the manuscript was rejected by publishers as too "bleak and depressing."[8] Barker met novelistAngela Carter at anArvon Foundation writers' workshop. Carter liked the book, telling Barker "if they can't sympathise with the women you're creating, then sod their fucking luck," and suggested she send the manuscript tofeminist publisherVirago, which accepted it.[2] TheNew Statesman hailed the novel as a "long overdue working class masterpiece,"[2] andThe New York Times Book Review commented Barker "gives the sense of a writer who has enormous power that she has scarcely had to tap to write a first-rate first novel."[9]Union Street was later adapted as the Hollywood filmStanley & Iris (1990), starringRobert De Niro andJane Fonda. Barker has said the film bears little resemblance to her book.[citation needed] As of 2003, the novel remained one of Virago's top sellers.[2]
Barker's first three published novels –Union Street (1982),Blow Your House Down (1984) andLiza's England (1986; originally published asThe Century's Daughter) – depicted the lives of working-class women inYorkshire.BookForum magazine described them as "full of feeling, violent and sordid, but never exploitative or sensationalistic and rarely sentimental."[10]Blow Your House Down portrays prostitutes living in aNorth of England city, who are being stalked by aserial killer.[11]Liza's England, described by theSunday Times as a "modern-day masterpiece," tracks the life of a working-class woman born at the dawn of the 20th century.[12]
Following the publication ofLiza's England, Barker felt she "had got myself into a box where I was strongly typecast as a northern, regional, working class, feminist—label, label, label—novelist. It's not a matter so much of objecting to the labels, but you do get to a point where people are reading the labels instead of the book. And I felt I'd got to that point", she said in 1992.[8] She said she was tired of reviewers asking "'but uh, can she do men?' – as though that were some kind of Everest".[13]
Therefore, she turned her attention to theFirst World War, which she had always wanted to write about due to her step-grandfather's wartime experiences. Wounded by abayonet and left with a scar, he would not speak about the war.[8] She was inspired to write what is now known as theRegeneration Trilogy—Regeneration (1991),The Eye in the Door (1993), andThe Ghost Road (1995)—a set of novels that explore the history of the First World War by focusing on the aftermath of trauma. The books are an unusual blend of history and fiction, and Barker draws extensively on the writings ofFirst World War poets andW. H. R. Rivers, an army doctor who worked withtraumatised soldiers. The main characters are based on historical figures, such asRobert Graves, Alice and Hettie Roper (pseudonyms forAlice Wheeldon and her daughter Hettie) with the exception of Billy Prior, whom Barker invented to parallel and contrast with British soldier-poetsWilfred Owen andSiegfried Sassoon. As the central fictional character, Billy Prior is in all three books.[14]
“I think the whole British psyche is suffering from the contradiction you see in Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, where the war is both terrible and never to be repeated and at the same time experiences derived from it are given enormous value," Barker toldThe Guardian. "No one watches war films in quite the way the British do."[15]
Barker told freelance journalist Wera Reusch "I think there is a lot to be said for writing about history, because you can sometimes deal with contemporary dilemmas in a way people are more open to because it is presented in this unfamiliar guise, they don't automatically know what they think about it, whereas if you are writing about a contemporary issue on the nose, sometimes all you do is activate people's prejudices. I think the historical novel can be a backdoor into the present which is very valuable."[16]
The Regeneration Trilogy was extremely well received by critics, with Peter Kemp of theSunday Times describing it as "brilliant, intense and subtle",[17] andPublishers Weekly saying it was "a triumph of an imagination at once poetic and practical."[18] The trilogy is described byThe New York Times as "a fierce meditation on the horrors of war and its psychological aftermath."[19] NovelistJonathan Coe describes it as "one of the few real masterpieces of late 20th centuryBritish fiction."[2] British author and critic,Rosemary Dinnage reviewing inThe New York Review of Books declared that it has "earned her a well-deserved place in literature"[14] resulting in its re-issue for the centenary of the First World War. In 1995 the final book in the trilogy,The Ghost Road, won theBooker–McConnell Prize.[20]
Barker's work is described as direct, blunt and plainspoken.[21][2]
In 2012,The Observer named theRegeneration Trilogy as one of "The 10 best historical novels".[22]
In 1983, Barker won theFawcett Society prize for fiction forUnion Street. In 1993 she won theGuardian Fiction Prize for theEye in the Door, and in 1995 she won theBooker Prize forThe Ghost Road. In May 1997, Barker was awarded an honorary doctorate by theOpen University.[23] In 2000, she was named aCommander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).[2]
In the review of her novelToby's Room,The Guardian stated about her writing, "You don't go to her for fine language, you go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world".[24]
The Independent wrote of her, "she is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature".[25]
In 2019, Barker was shortlisted for theWomen's Prize for Fiction forThe Silence of the Girls.[26] In their review of the novel,The Times wrote, "Chilling, powerful, audacious . . . A searing twist onThe Iliad. Amid the recent slew of rewritings of the great Greek myths and classics, Barker's stands out for its forcefulness of purpose and earthy compassion".[27]The Guardian stated, "This is an important, powerful, memorable book that invites us to look differently not only atThe Iliad but at our own ways of telling stories about the past and the present, and at how anger and hatred play out in our societies."[28]
In July 2024, Barker was elected as an honoraryFellow of the British Academy.[21]
In 1969, she was introduced, in a pub, toDavid Barker, a zoology professor and neurologist 20 years her senior, who left his marriage to live with her. They had two children together, and were married in 1978, after his divorce. Their daughter Anna Barker Ralph is a novelist. Barker was widowed when her husband died in January 2009.[29]
'Brilliant, intense and subtle' Peter Kemp,Sunday Times
