Customer Reviews

Double Vision: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The easy part is reading Pat Barker's stories. The tough part is thinking comprehensively about what one has read. Therefore, this review will be desultory in nature, with my observations subject to revision, as I continue to think about this terrific book.


Double Vision is my second read of Barker, and it won't be my last. Her economic use of language, in an epoch of a surfeit of information, is perhaps her greatest strength. Settings are drawn well and sufficiently, but not Hardylike. Characters are consistent throughout, speaking a dialogue that's believably real for us moderns.

This story centers around a seemingly "retired" war correspondent and his links from his now dead photographer/partner's life. Without spilling too much, I'll say that it is enough anti-war in its effects on the main characters as it has to be without imitating the woes of Hecuba in Troy.

Although the war scenes are alarming, the tale of insecurity in secure suburban civilization is probably the better carrier of message. The hints about human predation in just a few sentences in a scene where Uncle Stephen picks up nephew Adam from school play wondrously with judgments about our actual achievements regarding security.

To finish now, I'll say that the somewhat comedic ending indicates to me that a novel can be sensitive to commercial concerns, without sacrificing truth.

This book can be read easily in a weekend. You'll find it a labor to set down.

From the winner of the 1995 Booker Award and the author of the Regeneration Trilogy, Pat Barker, comes this latest literary offering.

Stephen Sharkey, a burnt-out war correspondent, returns from a harrowing experience in Afghanistan and determined to change his career and write a book based on the work of his colleague, Ben Frobisher, a photographer recently killed in Afghanistan. He moves to a cottage on his brother's property near Ben's widow, Kate Frobisher, a sculptor and begins his book. He soon finds himself involved with Justine, a woman twenty years his junior and so the plot evolves.

Barker is particularly adept in subtly delineating the effects of violence on the lives of her characters and this book is no exception. A quietly riveting tale.

Pat Barker develops some interesting characters in "Double Vision." Unfortunately, she does not tell much of a story. Kate Forbisher is an artist sculpting an image of Christ. She loses her husband Ben in Afghanistan. She crashes her car against a tree. Why did she do this? Is it a comment on women drivers? Who knows?

Someone peers in the window as she is lapsing into unconsciousness. We don't know who this was. We suspect Peter. We want to know who was peeping at Kate as she was bleeding. Is it a predator? Was it a country looky-loo without a phone? Who knows?

Peter is an ex-con who replaced sheep that had hoof and mouth disease and then hires on to help Kate chisel Christ. We kind of like Peter until we find out that he secretly likes to dress up in Kate's clothes and pretends to chisel Christ during thunderstorms. Kate doesn't like this either. We think Peter might commit some ex-con type of nasty act. Justine gets whacked over the head during a robbery. Did Peter whack her over the head? Did Peter get tired of replacing sheep and decide to rob stereos? Who knows?

Stephen Sharkey shows up. He was Ben's best friend. He seems to develop a crush on Kate despite her neck brace. Unfortunately, that has to be put on hold since he puts the moves on his brother Robert's nanny Justine. Justine is 19. Is Stephen really attracted to Kate? Or does he like teenagers? Does it take Justine's attack to help Stephen revere fidelity? Who knows?

Stephen's nephew Adam has Asperger's disease. He gets enjoyment from seeing road kill. Stephen helps him by taking him owl poop that can be washed to reveal the skulls of small animals that the owls ate. We think Adam is a bit weird. The kids at Adam's school think he's a bit weird. Adam thinks he's weird. Will Adam become a serial killer? Will Robert stop fooling around with other women and pay attention to his son? Will Robert stay with his wife Beth for Adam's sake? Will Stephen help Adam wash the owl poop after Justine gets hit on the head by an unnamed burglar and quits her job? Who knows? Who cares?

"Double Vision" has such an unfocused and unresolved plot that one might rename the tome "Blind As a Bat." Barker writes a lot of nice words. We enjoy her descriptions of dead women in war zones who are violated after death. We appreciate Ben's dedication to his work. We are sorry he gets killed in Afghanistan. Do we care? Who knows?

Taxi.

Pat Barker's DOUBLE VISION resolves perfectly the beery "brew-haha" of Miller Lite's immortal bar argument: "Tastes great! Less filling!" In this oh-so-faint cousin to English pastoral novels of George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy, Pat Barker has crafted a writerly but irrelevant novel filled with characterless characters, too-improbable plot contrivances, and pop philosophical conundrums supposedly arising from the great (and noticeably non-Asian, non-African) horrors of the last decade - Afghanistan, Kosovo, and 9/11.

The novel begins with the heroine, Kate Frobisher, suffering a temporarily debilitating auto accident on an icy country road. Kate is a sculptress, recently commissioned to create a fifteen-foot statue of (who else?) Christ. Her late husband Ben has recently died in Afghanistan, working there as a war photographer, and now Ben's partner and boozy friend Stephen arrives to incorporate Ben's work into a book about war and its observers and the meaning of recording such events while not participating (far, far, far better treated in the DVD "War Photographer" about James Nachtwey).

Remarkably, Stephen's brother Robert lives close by to Kate, and although Stephen falls for Kate, he falls even harder for Robert's 19-year-old babysitter, Justine (so exotically French!), the only child of the local (and badly divorced) vicar, Alec, who happens to take in ex-cons, one of whom, Peter, becomes Kate's temporary arms and legs in the art studio while she recovers from her accident. Got all that? Add in Robert's son Adam, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome and Peter's Zelig-like personality and surprise criminal past, all shadowed by that indomitable 15-foot Christ statue, and the result is "another fine mess" as Oliver Hardy used to say.

Barker's style is reservedly British, but her prose is observant and at times compelling if you can look past such Anglicisms as kerb (curb), poofs (gays), and fug ("a fug of warmth and music", "a fug of human bodies and damp wool"). She spins a convoluted web of strained family relationships among Robert's and Stephen's family, and between Stephen, Justine, and Alec, and their impact on one other plays at times like a multi-themed concerto.

Unfortunately, the interjections of BIG IDEAS about war, media, the role of the correspondent/photographer, Goya's representations of war, the fragility of life and our perpetual exposure to random violence and tragedy, even in the English countryside, reduce a novel of manners to Novel Lite. Nice prose, but too many big ideas too easily tossed off and unexamined, requiring too many plot manipulations to accommodate their presence (or force their presence in the first place). In the end, after all the dancing around horrific war images of rape and death, sniper bullets through the skull, and 9/11 catastrophes, we're left with Stephen's stunningly banal observation, "No experience is valid without the accompanying image." This philosophical gem presents itself just before a day cruise almost turned Titanic reminds us again about life's ever-threatening tragedies.

In the end, DOUBLE VISION feels more like a gentrified, exurb-London version of CLAN OF THE CAVE BEARS, full of grunts and head-clubbings (literal and figurative, that is) within an artsy, cloistered-almost-to-incestuousness, gossipy, adulterous, self-consciously angst-ridden clan of urban (and faultlessly urbane) transplants. Only Mrs. Peel and Mr. Steed are missing to complete the tableaux.

For those seeking this kind of countryside "slice of life" with a little intrigue, I recommend the more compelling and considerably more artistically satisfying alternatives of Graham Swift's WATERLAND and EVER AFTER and Robertson Davies' THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY.

Pat Barker has written a fabulous book in "Double Vision", a look into the present and future of our life through the form of violence and trauma, and how we respond. Of course, throughout the entire book the tune and lyrics of Foreigner's song, "Double Vision" played through my mind- how apropos;

"Fill my eyes with that double vision, no disguise for that double vision
Ooh, when it gets through to me, it's always new to me
My double vision always seems to get the best of me - the best of me, yeah"

Stephen Larkey, a war correspondent, returns to London from Afghanistan after 9/11. His best friend, Ben Frobisher has been killed. Ben was the photographer he worked with in most of his journeys. Stephen is suffering from post traumatic syndrome from the violence he has seen and needs to get his life together. On 9/11 he had called his wife and discovered that she had been in bed with another man. His life is in pieces and he needs to put it back together. His colleagues suggest psychotherapy, but he compares therapy to feeling sorry for himself and cannot go there. Stephen moves to a cottage in small town near his brother, Robert and his family, to write a book about war and it's after affects.

Kate Frobisher, Ben's wife lives near this small t own in the country. She is a sculptor and Kate has two traumas she is recovering from. She has had a bad auto accident that has left her weak with neck and spinal injuries. She is able to walk and move but will need physiotherapy. And, she has just re-entered the world after grieving for her husband Ben. She has accepted a job to sculpt a figure of Jesus for a church. She needs assistance to put this together and the local vicar, Alec Braithwaite, knows of a young man, Peter Wingrave who can help. This arrangement works out well. Kate likes to work alone, but Peter is almost invisible and he is most helpful However, it turns out that Peter has a great trauma of his own, and he is trying to work this out.

Stephen enters his new life and finds his brother and his marriage is in trouble. His nephew, Adam, has a behavioral issue that isolates him from other people Robert is a physician and spends more and more time away from home. His wife is very religious and works hard. She needs help at home. Justine, the vicar's daughter is recovering from a glandular illness and has put off college for a year. She works as an au pair a couple of hours, taking care of Adam after school. Stephen and Justine meet and start an affair. He knows this will not last a lifetime, but it is soothing for both of them. Justine suffers a beating after a robbery in the home, and this recent trauma for her gives her the need to recover with Stephen.

All of the characters in this novel need recovery from their personal traumas. 9/11 has brought violence and fear into our world. We have all gone through the various forms of recovery from trauma, and this novel shows us up close and personal how our lives are changed by sweeping historical tragedy and everyday violence. We require a leap of faith to move on, and this novel represents our firs move. Highly recommended. prisrob

This subtly written, beautiful book loses its bearings on page 204. Up until then it is written in alternating points of view: Stephen and Kate each have a story to tell and a historical connection through Kate's dead husband.

On page 204, the reader is suddenly given Justine's point of view (she is Stephen's much younger lover). Her thoughts are ordinary and banal. Then we are admitted to the view of Justine's father, Alec, for just a few pages. All this in the service of explaining a story that would be better left subtly unexplained.

Why was the author so determined to explain everything? To make everything come out even, so to speak?

The book is neatly tied up in the last fifty pages and the reader is left believing everyone will live happily ever after, at least for the near future. I just didn't buy it.

I lost my library book, Double Vision, at the Calgary Airport. The fee to send it would be $30! I purchased the book from Amazon for a minimal fee, and the librarian was thrilled to have the book returned in excellent condition; actually better than the one I lost!