Gooseboy (Barker)

A.L. Barker is good at writing particularly original novels. John Brown's body which I read last month was extremely complex, and The gooseboy is no less original.

It's a book about twins; the male twin Bysshe (pronounced to rhyme with "fish") is a film star (although he has had to adopt a better name for the stage!) and is contemplating a new part as a doctor. His sister, Dulcie meanwhile is trying to retrieve her husband Pike, who has deserted her and headed to Nice with an adolescent girl, near where Bysshe lives. The gooseboy of the title lives on the farm where Bysshe lives when he is not acting, looking after the farm geese; he is characterised by extreme beauty coupled with extreme scarring.

The story is far too complicated to go into in any more detail than that, but it is actually a fairly short book (149p.); somehow Barker manages to weave all of these different elements together to create a clever tale that is extremely well written.

It's a book that I wouldn't have chosen to read were it not for the VMC challenge - a bit too literary for me, but it is great that such literary work is also on the VMC list.

It's been published just once by Virago with a modern green cover. I got my copy from my Awesome books haul a month or so ago...

(By the way, this and the rest of A.L. Barker's oeuvre have recently been reissued by Faber Finds)

John Brown's Body (Barker)

I have never read anything by A.L. Barker, although I have heard of her and for a while I have been keen to read her book "The haunt", because it is set in my beloved Cornwall. John Brown's Body was on the 1970 Booker Shortlist so I hoped that it would be rather good.

It's a clever novel, that is told through two differing viewpoints - Marise, a young and naieve girl, who is married to Jack, a travelling salesman - and Ralph, who owns the building where the couple live. Marise believes that Ralph is John Brown, a man from the neighbourhood of her childhood who was accused of, but later acquited, of the gruesome murders of a pair of sisters. Ralph starts to play along with her fantasies and also starts to act differently from his staid and comfortable character and the book develops into an investigation into the ways of escapism. In no way straightforward, this book certainly made me think hard as I read it,

It has only been published once with a modern green cover. I shall be looking forward to reading the other two A.L. Barker's on my VMC list, "Gooseboy" and "Submerged", neither of which have passed my way yet.

Anyone else read anything by her?

Pat Barker catch-up, 414, 415, 417

Virago have published three books by Pat Barker as modern classics. She may be more familiar to readers as the writer of the impressive Regeneration trilogy, the final book of which (The ghost road) won the Booker prize. These three titles are essentially portraits of working class life, from a female perspective, and are all fascinating reads. It's been a while since I've read them, so I will have to content myself with showing you their covers, and reminding myself that I would like to pick them up again one day. They've each been published twice, in a newer green edition, and a non green edition.

Union Street
Blow your house down

Liza's England/Century's Daughter