God this was difficult. I'm in two minds about it. On the one hand there are some outbursts of exceptionally fine writing, like this from chapter ten:“Dewi chewed solemnly on a heavily-salted tomato sandwich as he peered through his living room window, his dust-iced skin zebraed by the sharp stripes of winter light which gushed, unapologetically – like hordes of white-frocked debutantes flashing their foaming silk petticoats in eager curtsies – between the regimented slats of his hand-built shutters.”On the other hand her tricolons can descend into lists of extraneous words that obscure the text like a sort of soft sleet.It's a unique piece of work; the only novel that's sent me to google to see if there really is a Wimpy's on Canvey (there isn't). Everything's more or less off kilter and there's a hallucinatory quality to the world in which the characters are strange visions.And that's a problem because the characters aren't in any sense real; I just didn't care whether they lived or not. Another problem is the lack of plot. You probably thing I'm very old-fashioned, expecting novels to have characterisation and a plot, but I really think they tend to have them because that's what makes them enjoyable. This barely has a narrative.This brings me to wonder what the point of this novel is. If anything, it appears to be about the hopeless search for meaning, both for the characters in life and for us (the reader) in the book. I don't think I'm wrong in thinking that the whole novel is a perverse piss-take by Barker. Here's an example from chapter forty-seven:“It was impossible to see far in the soft sleet, the half-light. Perhaps God was masquerading – Ted thought, scowling – for fun or out of sheer viciousness, as some kind of cack-handed amateur artist; roped in to paint the scenery for a bad school drama; working for nothing and – by the shoddy calibre of his output – without enthusiasm; wholly intent upon making the whole dmn world int a heavy-handed caricature; a sketch; a border; a wing; a back-drop.”Barker being God. I enjoy intellectual games in a novel, and this would have made a superb short story. Personally I found five hundred pages of having the piss taken out of me a bit much. On the other hand it's exercised my brain.
It's hard to describe Nicola Barker's writing. At times, this book seems to be just a lot of nonsense happenings, and it's difficult to fully figure out what's going on - even after finishing, I still can't say I have, but oddly, that didn't detract from my enjoyment, and I love her writing anyway. There's something about it for me that's hard to pinpoint, but I can say that the oddity of the characters and events has a great appeal to me. She's a "new" author to me, but is a UK author who's been around since the 90's. I find her to have quite a unique and fresh voice, unlike any other author I've ever encountered or read. I picked this up after liking the first in the Thames Gateway series (Wide Open) and will definitely be reading the third in the series (Darkmans). There appears to be no connection whatsoever that makes this a "true" series, other than geographically (e.g. no recurring characters), which is just another one of the oddities around Nicola Barker, very fitting given her writing style.The Telegraph Magazine (London) review on the back cover says it best:If you've never read a Nicola Barker novel, prepare to enter a parallel universe. In Barkerland, everything is familiar, but nothing feels quite right...Yet once you have accepted the strangeness, the rest is total beguilement: the richness of her language and imagery, macabre humor and pin-sharp dialogue.
What do You think about Behindlings (2003)?
This is the second book in Barker's Thames Gateway series, although I'm not entirely sure where the 'series' part is as the characters are different, the subject is different and the location is different. Maybe it's a British thing I don't understand. Anyway, the premise of the story is quirky and interesting. Like Wide Open, the reader enters the story where the characters pretty much know everything and it is a process to reveal it to the reader. I thought there were pieces of the story that we could have done without but perhaps that is just a reaction because I was feeling irritated with the book. See, while the action of the character and the story itself are being told, the random thoughts crossing the mind of the character is interjected. It is most irritating and, for me, detracted from the flow of the story. Additionally, many of the characters seemed to stutter quite a bit and have a problem completing their sentences. Again, distrupting the flow of the story and not really enhancing the story. I don't remember this format being used in Wide Open and it does not appear that it is employed in the third book of the series, Darkmans. Because it is not, I will continue to read the series.
—Keri
Last night I finished reading Nicola Barker’s monolithic novel Behindlings: an über-manic triumph for the imagination wired on a diet of speedball and Dr. Pepper. Barker is one of the most venerated novelists of her generation, winning the Impac Award at the turn of the millennium, and has been raking in the prizes and wonga ever since.Behindlings is a throbbing headache of a novel. Her language kept me smiling and giggling for the first 200 pages – when her talent knew no fault, when her loopy plots wrapped me in fuzzy love – but then… I hit a wall of total alienation. Barker had literally been spoon-feeding me so much brilliance, I burst. Each page became a sugary confection I was unable to swallow, lest my gut distend far and yonder.Newcomers should try "Three-Button Trick" or "Wide Open".
—MJ Nicholls
I started this book forever-ago, and I should have kept at it and focused on finishing it in a much more timely manner. But I didn't -- the book hardly kept my attention for a full chapter at a time, so I kept putting it down and going back to it every now and then. As a result, I easily confused the characters and forgot who some were all together. This woman is an amazing writer and I'm sure this book is infinitely interesting, but it is very slow (on purpose, I believe) and often confusing, which made it difficult for me to stick with it. I'm going to hold on to this one and go back and start at the beginning sometime when my schedule is less crazy and I can really focus on it. The characters are very interesting and I'd like to see how they end up. But right now, I don't have the attention span for it.
—Staci
