29-411: The Regeneration Trilogy is a series of three novels by Pat Barker on the subject of the final part First World War , focusing primarily on 1917 and 1918. The novels blend fact and fiction, hanging on a frameworks of factual events, an interwoven set of fictional story-lines of real people with fictional characters. The broad themes outlined across the three books are the modernisation of medicine in
58-482: A book which she "didn't think could be published". This opinion was backed up by the responses she received which centered on the book being too bleak and depressing In 1978 Barker took part in a writers' workshop run by the Arvon Foundation at Lumb Bank near Heptonstall and met author Angela Carter . Carter read Union Street and encouraged Barker to send the manuscript to the publisher Virago Press . Virago,
87-513: A first-rate first novel." Union Street was later adapted as the Hollywood film Stanley & Iris (1990), starring Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda . Barker has said the film bears little resemblance to her book. As of 2003, the novel remained one of Virago's top sellers. Barker's first three novels – Union Street (1982), Blow Your House Down (1984) and Liza's England (1986; originally published as The Century's Daughter ) – depicted
116-525: A specialist in women's literature , accepted the book and it was published in 1982. Union Street won the Fawcett Society book prize in 1983. It was among the runners up for the Guardian Fiction Prize . A film loosely adapted from Union Street , called Stanley & Iris , was released in 1989. Unlike the book, the film is a romantic comedy . It features one character in common with
145-451: Is a novelist. Barker was widowed when her husband died in January 2009. Union Street (novel) Union Street is the first novel by English author Pat Barker , published by Virago Press in 1982. It describes the lives of seven working-class women living on Union Street and how they respond to the changes brought about by deindustrialisation. It is set in northeastern England during
174-513: Is activate people's prejudices. I think the historical novel can be a backdoor into the present which is very valuable." The Regeneration Trilogy was extremely well received by critics, with Peter Kemp of the Sunday Times describing it as "brilliant, intense and subtle", and Publishers Weekly saying it was "a triumph of an imagination at once poetic and practical." The trilogy is described by The New York Times as "a fierce meditation on
203-588: 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 her Regeneration Trilogy , published in the 1990s, and, more recently, a series of books set during the Trojan War , starting with The Silence of the Girls in 2018. Patricia Mary W. Drake was born on 8 May 1943 to a working-class family in Thornaby-on-Tees in
232-638: Is an important, powerful, memorable book that invites us to look differently not only at The 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." In July 2024, Barker was elected as an honorary Fellow of the British Academy . In 1969, she was introduced, in a pub, to David 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
261-629: The Booker Prize for The Ghost Road . In May 1997, Barker was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Open University . In 2000, she was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In the review of her novel Toby'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
290-583: The North Riding of Yorkshire , England. Her mother Moyra died in 2000; her father's identity is unknown. According to The Times , Moyra became pregnant "after a drunken night out while in the Wrens ." In a social climate where illegitimacy 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
319-457: The 1970s. The 1990 movie Stanley & Iris is a loose adaptation of the novel. The novel is divided into chapters each covering the same few months but centring on the life of one of seven working-class women living the area of Union Street in northeastern England. The characters range in age and circumstance, Alice Bell is in her seventies and dying whereas Kelly Brown is eleven, but all of them face struggles and poverty. The book begins with
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#1732927334537348-759: The age of eleven, Barker won a place at grammar school , attending King James Grammar School in Knaresborough and Grangefield Grammar School in Stockton-on-Tees. Barker, who says she has always been an avid reader, studied international history at the London School of Economics from 1962-65. After graduating in 1965, she returned home to nurse her grandmother, who died in 1971. Barker has written many novels. In her mid-twenties, Barker began to write fiction. Her first three novels were never published and, she told The Guardian in 2003, "didn't deserve to be: I
377-441: 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 to feminist publisher Virago , which accepted it. The New Statesman hailed the novel as a "long overdue working class masterpiece," and The 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
406-464: The book. And I felt I'd got to that point", she said in 1992. She said she was tired of reviewers asking "'but uh, can she do men?' – as though that were some kind of Everest". Therefore, she turned her attention to the First World War , which she had always wanted to write about due to her step-grandfather's wartime experiences. Wounded by a bayonet and left with a scar, he would not speak about
435-482: The character of eleven-year-old Kelly Brown and deals with her rape and the response of Kelly and her community to the rape. When the people on the street find out about her rape they will not deal with it openly with her; instead, they react with general sympathy, in the way they would have if she had been ill, but both the adults and children talk about the incident behind her back. Kelly becomes increasingly isolated, distrustful of adults and no longer feeling at home with
464-568: The exception of Billy Prior, whom Barker invented to parallel and contrast with British soldier-poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon . As the central fictional character, Billy Prior is in all three books. “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 told The Guardian. "No one watches war films in quite
493-645: The final book in the trilogy, The Ghost Road , won the Booker–McConnell Prize . Barker's work is described as direct, blunt and plainspoken. In 2012, The Observer named the Regeneration Trilogy as one of "The 10 best historical novels". In 1983, Barker won the Fawcett Society prize for fiction for Union Street . In 1993 she won the Guardian Fiction Prize for the Eye in the Door , and in 1995 she won
522-582: The history of our world". The Independent wrote of her, "she is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature". In 2019, Barker was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction for The Silence of the Girls . In their review of the novel, The Times wrote, "Chilling, powerful, audacious . . . A searing twist on The 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". The Guardian stated, "This
551-526: The horrors of war and its psychological aftermath." Novelist Jonathan Coe describes it as "one of the few real masterpieces of late 20th century British fiction ." British author and critic, Rosemary Dinnage reviewing in The New York Review of Books declared that it has "earned her a well-deserved place in literature" resulting in its re-issue for the centenary of the First World War. In 1995
580-400: The life of a working-class woman born at the dawn of the 20th century. Following the publication of Liza'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
609-514: The lives of working-class women in Yorkshire . BookForum magazine described them as "full of feeling, violent and sordid, but never exploitative or sensationalistic and rarely sentimental." Blow Your House Down portrays prostitutes living in a North of England city, who are being stalked by a serial killer . Liza's England , described by the Sunday Times as a "modern-day masterpiece," tracks
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#1732927334537638-480: The other children; she spends an increasing amount of time by herself at night in the neighbourhood. As time passes Kelly's silence turns to anger, responding to the trauma of the events with acts of rebellion and violence, such as cutting her hair short and breaking the windows of a school. Although Union Street was "highly praised" by critics, it also drew unfavourable comments due to its subject matter and setting. The Guardian reported that one interviewer
667-472: The treatment of trauma and mental illness with its differing application in relation to social class — the progressive and considerate cutting-edge Freudian treatment for officers versus the regressive, aggressive, and brutal aversion therapy for the lower ranks. Also, the theme of sexuality — hetero-, bi-, and homo-sexuality — is prevalent throughout and its interplay again across the social classes. The main characters are: In 2012, The Observer named
696-438: The trilogy in its entirety as one of "The 10 best historical novels". This article about a World War I novel first published in the 1990s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . Pat Barker Patricia Mary W. Barker , CBE , FRSL , Hon FBA ( née Drake ; born 8 May 1943)
725-641: The war. She was inspired to write what is now known as the Regeneration Trilogy — Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993), and The 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 of First World War poets and W.H.R. Rivers , an army doctor who worked with traumatised soldiers . The main characters are based on historical figures, such as Robert Graves , Alice and Hettie Roper (pseudonyms for Alice Wheeldon and her daughter Hettie) with
754-469: The way the British do." 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
783-455: Was appalled by the realistic coverage of " menstruation , childbirth and back-street abortion" and declared the book to be "far too gynaecological". During the 1970s Barker wrote three manuscripts for what she describes as "middle-class novels" which got positive responses from publishers but were all rejected for publication. Due to these rejections she thought her books would probably never be published so felt free to work on Union Street ,
812-488: Was being a sensitive lady novelist, which is not what I am. There's an earthiness and bawdiness in my voice.” Her first published novel was Union Street (1982), which consisted of seven interlinked stories about English working class women whose lives are circumscribed by poverty and violence. For ten years, the manuscript was rejected by publishers as too "bleak and depressing." Barker met novelist Angela Carter at an Arvon Foundation writers' workshop. Carter liked
841-437: Was seven. Barker could have joined her mother, she told The 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." Her grandparents ran a fish and chip shop which failed and the family was, she told The Times in 2007, "poor as church mice; we were living on National Assistance – 'on the pancrack', as my grandmother called it." At
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