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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Harsh school of life, February 3, 2008
Reading Life Class, a line from Henri Nouwen kept running through my head: "You can get straight A's in school and still flunk life." Or, in loyalty to the title of Pat Barker's wonderful new novel, perhaps this is more appropriate: "You can do well in the schoolroom, but the real proof of the pudding is how well you do in life class."
The lead characters in Barker's novel, whom we meet on the eve of World War I, are all deeply wounded in one way or another: Neville, the bullied boy who grows up to be a bullying man; Teresa, the femme fatale who evokes a destructive passion in her lovers; Elinor, obsessively using her art as a safe harbor from the world; and Paul, the protagonist, so traumatized in his boyhood by the insanity, physical abuse, and suicide of his mother that intimacy is difficult for him.
At the novel's outset, each of these characters is associated with the Slade school of art in London (Teresa is a model, the rest are students). They live in the safe bubble of the academy, and judge themselves and one another according to its relatively untroublesome standards. But all of them, as the novel unfolds, are propelled by the outbreak of the war into the much more challenging (and unforgiving) school of life. The upheaval of their world, the demolition of their comfortably reassuring pre-war conventions, offers them ample opportunity to face their own wounds, recognize just how their personal suffering influences their actions and relationships, and do something to heal. This is the test that they--and all humans--must pass or flunk.
At novel's end, though, only Paul--a failed student in Slade's classrooms--passes. When war erupts, both he and Neville volunteer as medical orderlies and ambulance drivers. Neville, true to form, manages to avoid danger, but returns to London society with a portmanteau of paintings that are all the rage. Paul, who'd been told by his art professor that he'd never be a decent artist until he felt deeply, is taught by the war to do precisely that. The horrible suffering of the soldiers he nurses, the violent death of his best friend, his own wounding from a fronhtline shelling, force him past the emotional frozenness that fell on him at his mother's suicide. His paintings take on a new vitality, but also a new terribleness.
Teresa disappears in the second half of the novel, the implication being that she's so ill-prepared for the school of life that her story is too uninterestingly static to continue. We do know, however, that she continues to be a successful artist's model. Elinor submerges herself more and more deeply into her art, refusing to think about the war, much less allow it to influence her painting. She prefers to live in the pristine and abstract world of the "artiste," symbolized in the novel by her becoming a part of the Bloomsburg set. At novel's end, she's working on a pastoral landscape that's as far removed from what's going on at the front--and from what Paul's experiencing and painting--as anything could be. But, like Teresa and Neville, her moderate showing in the school of life is muted by her remarkable success at the Slade, where she collects honors and scholarships for her safe paintings and drawings.
This is an extremely ambitious and thoughtful novel that encourages readers to question their values and deepest ambitions. As usual with a Barker novel, there are passages which are breath-takingly evocative, and her ability to imagine herself (and us) onto a battlefield is uncanny. Still, it's not entirely clear to me that Barker has totally pulled off what she wanted to. The two parts of the novel, for example, don't hang together as well as they might. One almost gets the impression that they're really two separate stories. Moreover, the evolution of the characters, especially Paul and Elinor, seems a bit rushed at times. But all in all, this is a story worthy of the author of the Regeneration Trilogy. Highly recommended.
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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
not up to the regeneration trilogy level, February 2, 2008
Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy is a great work, truly deserving of 5 stars (or more!). I've sent copies to family and friends, and I have copies both at home and in the office for easy rereading. Life Class takes us back to WW I, but sadly the magic of the Regeneration trilogy just isn't there. As with Regeneration, there are scenes in London and of the war (behind the front, though, at first-aid stations). Regeneration did a brilliant job of meshing real characters (Rivers, Owen, Sassoon, Graves, etc) with fictional ones (Billy). Life Class has the real character Tonks (at the Strade), but his part is minor. Owen's work "Anthem for Doomed Youth" seems to exemplify Regeneration--there's a sense of similar foreboding over the trilogy, and we know from history that Owen is indeed doomed, and Sassoon and Graves lived. Life Class doesn't have a similar feeling.
In Regeneration, the threads of Rivers, Owen, Sassoon, Graves, and Billy continue and intertwine throughout the trilogy. In Life Class, Pat Barker as Atropos has cut lots of threads short--not through death, but by having what seem like important characters disappear from the picture. Things seem shallower--there's not the depth and richness that Regeneration has.
It may be that we've been spoiled by Regeneration: we expect Pat Barker's other novels to rise to that standard. But few WW I novels do rise to that standard--Under Fire, Her Privates We, Paths of Glory, and not many others. I have a nagging feeling that if Pat Barker had not written Regeneration, I might perhaps have given Life Class 4 stars. It's decent, but not great, and 8-10 years from now I might reread it. But I reread Regeneration every couple of years, and I have 3-4 copies of the trilogy books--I worry about wanting to read them and not being able to find them. So Life Class is a decent read, and probably better if you aren't thinking about Regeneration as you read it.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Art and love in the context of war (3.5 *s), February 18, 2008
This is a story that juxtaposes the anxieties and amusements of both the dilettantes and the talented who attend art school with the demands and savagery experienced by those on the front lines of WWI. Paul Tarrant, Elinor Brooke, Kit Neville are students or former students of the Slade school for fine arts in London. All are talented but Kit is already becoming known in the larger art world. While Elinor produces pleasant and scholarship-winning paintings, Paul seems unable to make the leap to making an artistic statement.
The first half of the book follows this threesome at a somewhat languid pace as they attempt to win favor with each other, including the possibilities of crossing the divide from friends to lovers. This idyllic world of painting and socializing is abruptly interrupted as all of London erupts in patriotic fever as England is forced to come to the rescue of the French to stop the Kaiser. Both Kit and Paul succumb to the pressures of proving manhood by volunteering to lend medical assistance to the war effort in Belgium.
The last half of the book primarily follows Paul in his duties as first an orderly in a field hospital, then as an ambulance driver to the front lines. It is truly a transformative experience for Paul, but the mud, muck, gore, and horror are balanced by the resiliency and humanity of both those hideously mangled and his fellow workers. It is in these highly chaotic and new circumstances that Elinor and Paul explore their feelings for each other. Are the foundations of love and art unaffected by this chaos and mayhem, or are they somehow redefined. Paul and Elinor are forced to grapple with such questions, though not necessarily with equal success.
The novel is interesting and enjoyable, but it doesn't reach out and grab the reader. The characters all seem reluctant and hesitant - somewhat disconnected. The plot, in exploring two vastly different worlds, has a feeling of being incomplete. Perhaps that is all that the characters will allow.
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