7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"We live our whole lives one step from clarity", December 19, 2003
This review is from: Double Vision: A Novel (Hardcover)
In alignment with her previous novels, Pat Barker explores how people have been fractured by violence in her latest novel, DOUBLE VISION. In the post-9/11 world Barker finds more manifestations of violence to write about. Each character in DOUBLE VISION has experienced some traumatic event that has resulted in a double vision of sorts. One eye is turned back to the past and the other is looking forward from the moment that violence shattered their life. They will never be the same.
In the north of England in the countryside near Newcastle Stephen Sharkey moves from London to the North after resigning from his post of a war correspondent. He settles down in his brother's empty cottage to write about his experiences in various war-torn locations. But although he has removed himself from the danger, he continues to be plagued by nightmares and flashbacks of his horrific war experiences. Meanwhile Beth, the wife of his deceased colleague who was shot by a sniper in Afghanistan, struggles to recover from an automobile accident. She lives only miles from Stephen's cottage, but she endures her own double vision of how violence ruptured her life and cut short the life of her husband.
In addition to the two main characters there are others who suffer from their own double vision. There is Justine who interrupts a home robbery and is beaten up and Peter who has suffered some secretive misdeeds that landed him in prison at a young age. Not only have the characters suffered from violence but also the landscape. Barker included numerous references to violence of the Foot and Mouth epidemic that has resulted in pyres to extinguish the affected livestock and the resulting decline in tourist trade and local economic commerce.
Barker performs a good exploration of how contemporary violence affects individuals and the land but I feel that she could have reached deeper into the individual darkness of each of her characters. This is a slim book at roughly 250 pages therefore there is adequate space to expand without dire consequences. There are also some characters that were not fully developed such as 10-year-old Adam. Otherwise DOUBLE VISION is a satisfying read. 3.5 stars.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nice Enough Characters But Not So Interesting, January 8, 2004
This review is from: Double Vision: A Novel (Hardcover)
This is a very well-written novel centered around two people who are recovering from violence - one a war correspondent, Steve, who retires after a stint in Afghanistan and the other a sculptress who is recovering from a car crash of her own and the death of her husband, a war photographer who had worked with Steve.
One would expect with that set-up that the two characters would get together when he retires to his brother's cottage in the same small village, but that pat story-line thankfully does not pan out. They actually only meet a few times.
The theme of the book is the renewal and regeneration of these characters; one through her work and one through an affair with a much younger woman he knows he will never keep for good.
The strength of the book is the fine writing and the character development. The most interesting character, however, was a gardener, Peter, who worked as an assistant to the sculptress and wrote disturbing prose on the side. He was the only character with any tension or mystery.
The disappointing aspect of the book was that Peter was the only really interesting character. The others were likeable enough, but not gripping. There were some nice small insights into sculpture and experiences as a war correspondent in places like Bosnia. Unfortunately there was not enough tension or conflict among the main characters to really keep the readers interest at a high level. There were other characters brought in who never really enhanced the story.
Not a bad read, especially since the writing was so good. Unfortunately, the story-line lacked depth, tension, conflict or mystery.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry and menace, March 9, 2004
This review is from: Double Vision: A Novel (Hardcover)
Themes of individual loss and trauma seen against the remote brutality and atrocity of war preoccupy the main characters of Barker's nuanced, engrossing novel. Poetic, atmospheric prose combines with the small mysteries of behavior to create a duality of beauty and menace. This undercurrent of tension ebbs and flows, like a low-grade fever threatening to erupt over efforts to cope with love and grief and issues too large to grasp and hold.
Grieving sculptor Kate Frobisher is the widow of Ben, a photographic journalist who traveled the world's wars. He was killed by a sniper just after photographing a still life of abandoned Soviet tanks in Afghanistan. As the book opens, Kate loses control of her car on a winter night and suffers injuries to her neck and back, which prevent her from resuming work on her latest commission - a monumental Christ figure for an outdoor promontory, which will be viewed from afar as well as up close, presenting profound technical difficulties for the artist, who must make the statue work from two very different vantage points.
Stephen Sharkey, a colleague and close friend of Ben's, has come to the countryside to write a book on war, perception, and the journalists' effects on what they see. He will be using Ben's photographs in his book. He and Ben were in New York on 9/11 and Stephen is reminded that life goes on in all its mundane triumphs and tragedies when he calls home to connect with his wife that night only to discover her infidelity. But it's not until after Ben's death that he quits his job, gets a divorce, and starts his book.
Stephen's working retreat is a cottage belonging to his physician brother, Robert, near Kate's old farmhouse. Robert and his wife, Beth, have a son with Asperger's syndrome, cared for by Justine, the 19-year-old daughter of the local vicar, a man of deliberate conscience who takes in former convicts. Justine, recovering from an affair with one of them, Peter, a rather aloof, handsome enigma, takes up with Stephen, who finds himself rejuvenated, if a little self-conscious. Peter, recommended by the vicar, has become a temporary assistant to Kate, who dislikes having anyone around while she is working, but requires the physical aid.
Each has suffered (or will suffer) some trauma, or at least setback, that affects their perceptions and progress through life. It's only the war-ravaged dead for whom the violation is final, although witnesses, perpetrators and those who interpret the images of atrocities to the wider public immortalize their suffering.
Stephen ponders the novel's overt themes -perception and violence - while negotiating his way through an affair with a girl young enough to be his daughter. " `Why won't you watch the news?' he asked [Justine]. It staggered him, this indifference to what was going on in the world." Justine, parroting her previous lover, says she can read the papers. " `It's the voyeurism of looking at it, that's what's wrong.' "
With Kate, Stephen discusses the filmmaker on 9/11 who shut off his camera rather than film burning people and Goya's clamorous paintings of violence. " `It's that argument he's having with himself, all the time, between the ethical problems of showing the atrocities and yet the need to say, "Look, this is what's happening." ' "
And, as ever, life goes on. Kate struggles with interpretations - of her massive Christ and of her own growing uneasiness with Peter as well as the drastic alteration Ben's death has made in her life. Justine, missing her first year at Cambridge because of an illness, bored and broken-hearted, is both more wary and more uninhibited with Stephen. Beth, trying to seem worldlier to her unfaithful husband, works a stressful job when she'd rather be home with her garden and her troubled son.
Barker's writing is simultaneously earthy and mysterious, lofty and mundane. Symbolism and mystery tantalize, while sex and weather and bickering move the plot through its paces. A fine, memorable novel.
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