{"id":2376,"date":"2012-08-30T06:32:51","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T06:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2376"},"modified":"2012-08-31T06:16:11","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T06:16:11","slug":"tobys-room-by-pat-barker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2376","title":{"rendered":"Toby’s Room by Pat Barker"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Hamish Hamilton 30 August 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

272 pp, hardback, \u00a316.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Zo\u00eb\u00a0 Fairbairns<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the summer of 1912, and, in the eponymous room, art student Elinor Brooke is having sex with Toby, her older brother. Later, Elinor makes an unexpected discovery about Toby\u2019s origins.<\/p>\n

Both episodes cast their shadows over the next few years; but a longer one is cast by the outbreak of war in 1914. Toby and Elinor have to decide their response, as do Elinor\u2018s friends at the Slade School of Fine Art: Kit Neville, who answers his country\u2019s call to arms, and Paul Tarrant who volunteers as a medical orderly. Elinor herself keeps calm and carries on painting.<\/p>\n

If some of these names and storylines sound familiar, it\u2019s because we have met these characters before, in Pat Barker\u2019s most recent novel Life Class <\/em>(2007).<\/p>\n

Toby\u2019s Room <\/em>is both sequel and prequel. Whether either was necessary is another question. The characters and their dilemmas (to fight or not to fight? If women aren\u2019t allowed to vote, why should they be patriotic? What is the role of an artist in wartime?) are enough to sustain one novel, but perhaps not two. Toby\u2019s Room <\/em>lacks the conviction of Barker\u2019s earlier First World War novels, a sense that the author really cares about what she is doing – or indeed that she is doing anything more than using up material that didn\u2018t make it into Life Class.<\/em><\/p>\n

Granted there is some development of character and plot. (Spoiler alert: stop reading now if you don\u2019t want to know what happens.) Paul moves on from dressing soldiers\u2019 wounds to becoming a wounded soldier himself. His injuries are not as serious as those of the erstwhile ladies\u2019 man Kit, who has most of his face shot away. Visiting him in hospital, Elinor finds a use for her drawing skills as a medical artist, working with surgeons to design new features for men like Kit.<\/p>\n

So far, so absorbing. But there\u2019s more. Or less, depending on how you look at it. There\u2019s discussion of art, but too much of it relates to paintings which we can\u2019t see because they\u2019re fictional, and which are described only through the eyes of their creators, or their creators\u2019 friends, teachers or lovers, none of whom can be expected to be entirely objective. It\u2019s hard to have an attitude to biased views of fictional artworks.<\/p>\n

Important stories – particularly the sexual ones – are only half-told. The brother-sister sexual encounter in Chapter One is not described in any detail – we first see Elinor spurning Toby\u2019s approaches on a shared country walk, but when late at night she makes her way to his room in her nightie, it\u2019s clear that her purpose is not to suggest a game of cards. We see that, \u2018he reached out, closed his hand gently round her wrist and pulled her down towards him,\u2019 but that\u2019s it. If it wasn\u2019t a chapter ending, you might expect a row of nudge-nudge dots. Afterwards the episode is referred to only obliquely, so we don\u2019t know what to think. What\u2019s it like to have sex with your brother? I don\u2019t know, I haven\u2019t got a brother, but if it\u2019s an important part of a novel I\u2019m reading, then I\u2019d like to read about it. Even if the mechanics of the act are the same as with anyone, what do you actually say? <\/em>Isn\u2019t it, you know, embarrassing?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Similar vagueness surrounds the sexually-versatile Toby\u2019s later liaison, this time with a man, when both are serving on the Western Front. Toby is by then an army officer; the other man is a young stable hand. Few contemporary readers of Pat Barker would have a problem with the idea of two men in a war zone finding love and sexual comfort with each other – we would probably applaud. But the only account Barker gives us is that of Kit Neville, who happens upon the couple, and later describes what he saw: \u2018We\u2019re talking about a man exploiting his inferiors. (Toby) Brooke was an officer. That lad couldn\u2019t have said no even if he\u2019d wanted to\u2026It\u2019s no use idealizing that kind of thing. It\u2019s not Greek love, you know, it\u2019s just another form of bullying. I hated it at school and I hate it now.\u2019 When this is the only account we have – and Kit Neville, traumatized by injuries, doped with painkillers and steeped in prejudices of his own, may or may not be a reliable narrator – there\u2018s no basis for the reader to have an attitude to the revelation of Toby\u2019s homosexuality, or the suicidal way he chooses to escape its legal and social penalties.<\/p>\n

The book ends with Elinor clearing out Toby\u2019s room and finding, on his mattress, a \u2018small stain\u2019. She is then seen \u2018leaving Toby\u2019s room for the last time.\u2019 It\u2019s probably a good idea.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Zo\u00eb Fairbairns<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the summer of 1912, and, in the eponymous room, art student Elinor Brooke is having sex with Toby, her older brother. Later, Elinor makes an unexpected discovery about Toby\u2019s origins. Both episodes cast their shadows over the next few years; but a longer one is cast by the outbreak of war in 1914. Toby and Elinor have to decide their response, as do Elinor\u2018s friends at the Slade School of Fine Art: Kit Neville, who answers his country\u2019s call to arms, and Paul Tarrant who volunteers as a medical orderly. Elinor herself keeps calm and carries on painting. If some of these names and storylines sound familiar, it\u2019s because we have met these characters before, in Pat Barker\u2019s most recent novel Life Class<\/em> (2007). […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2376"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2409,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376\/revisions\/2409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}