Imprint: Penguin
Published: 07/04/2016
ISBN: 9780241966037
Length: 272 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 17mm x 129mm
Weight: 191g
RRP: £8.99
From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls
The final novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - an unforgettable story of art and war, from one of our greatest writers on war and the human heart
'Bold, hard-hitting, unforgettable, with luminous and unsparing insight' Independent on Sunday
'Barker's command of detail and gift for metaphor are as sharp as ever... Noonday is in the first rank' Mail on Sunday
'[There is] no end to her talent in describing how conflicts rupture the soul' Arifa Akbar, Independent
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. 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. Writing about the Second World War for the first time, Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London into electrifying life.
The Life Class trilogy:
Life Class
Toby's Room
Noonday
Imprint: Penguin
Published: 07/04/2016
ISBN: 9780241966037
Length: 272 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 17mm x 129mm
Weight: 191g
RRP: £8.99
Publisher's description. Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of Blitz-era London to electrifying life in Noonday, the third and final novel in her 'Life Class Trilogy'. Bombs are falling on London and, still suffering from the losses of the Great War, Elinor, Paul and Kit must face war's horrors once again...
Barker's command of detail and gift for metaphor are as sharp as ever: her evocation of the bombed city is steeped in drama... Noonday is in the first rank
Tremendously good
This is the first time the author of the Regeneration Trilogy has written about the Second World War and it's a triumph
Many strokes of genius from Barker... accessible and moving
Noonday's Blitz-era setting gives Barker ample opportunity to do what she does best
Powerful and vivid, with nuanced characters and Barker's unerring eye for detail
Bold, hard-hitting, unforgettable... a virtuoso rendition of the bombing, as huge swathes of London blaze away with the brightest of bright lights... Barker shows us how the city's finest moment was indubitably also its most terrifying, with luminous and unsparing insight
Ambitious, vivid, sharp... The closer you get to the end, the more lives need saving and the more thwarted and complicated the domestic backdrop... Barker's chronological leap is a sophisticated bridge between the drama of the present and the haunted history of the past
Colourfully alive, fizzes with energy... the novel's point of view swivel[s] like a torchbeam to illuminate London's devastated streets