Did you ever have one of your friends invite you somewhere and tell you you HAVE to meet this other friend of theirs, you'll get on like a house on fire, you'll absolutely love him/her, and then you meet this other friend of theirs, and you can't see why your friend thought you might possibly like this person, in fact this person is a FOOL and has a BAD SCREECHY LAUGH and wait a minute - WHAT DOES THAT MEAN YOUR FRIEND THINKS YOU'RE LIKE?Well, I should like Nicola Barker, I can quite see why we were introduced, and I really kind of don't. She's English and not afraid to set her novels in modern England as 99% of contemporary English writers are (invisible subtitle of English novels published in the last 40 years : Anywhere But Here) And she has a voice, that mysterious unique thing good writers can create when they only have at their disposal the SAME words that we all do, so how do they work that magic, must be like painters all starting off with the same three colours, you'd think there would be more, anyway, where was I. Ah. You know Nicola Barker would be a right laugh to have a few pints with, I just know. If she rang me up tomorrow I'd say well I was going to stay in and watch a depressing Russian film but you talked me out of that, see you in The Gladstone at 8.17! And we'd have a great evening. But her books are mad. And maddening. I was in full throw-it-at-the-wall mode on several occasions but every time some genius twist of phrase or glint of greatness flashed out from the page zzzzammm pzow ouch - like that. I'm glad I finished it but I wish that Miss Barker had too. At the end there is a catastrophe of sorts but unlike in tragedies it resolves NOTHING and makes NO sense, not even metaphorical sense although it could be I was too dense to spot that. The characters are barmy, unappealing and are never ever explained. But she has such a rare style. Her style almost makes her insane non-plot worth dragging through. Note - after this one I tried Miss Barker's giant bookernominee'd darkmans and as readers of that review will know we parted on bad terms. So now if I find myself sitting next to Nicola at the table under the stuffed parakeet I'll say my name is Derek, what do you do? Novelist? very nice. No, I never read them. I know I should, but i just don't seem to have the time.
Extraña novela. Una historia desconcertante, y por momentos inquietante, sobre un grupo de personas, todos ellos parias de la sociedad, personajes excéntricos y atenazados por sus miedos personales, que andan a la búsqueda de una vía de escape: esconderse o quedarse totalmente al descubierto.La escritora británica Nicola Barker, a la que se ha comparado con Martin Amis o Will Self, construye su novela sobre la base de los diálogos, llenos de fuerza, desvelándonos la información de la trama en pequeñas dosis. Entramos en esta extraña historia a través de sus personajes, con unos estados mentales ciertamente inestables, y de sus descripciones particulares del mundo que les rodea.El inicio es potente, con el encuentro de un conductor con un peculiar personaje que saluda a los coches desde un puente. Ronny, el conductor, queda fascinado por esta persona, que también se hace llamar Ronny. Posteriormente, conoceremos a otros personajes, que se convertirán en vecinos accidentales: Lily, una joven impredecible e iracunda; Sara, su madre, que se ha de hacer cargo de la granja de verracos; Nathan, el hermano de Ronny, que vive atormentado por lo sucedido en su infancia; o Luke, un pornógrafo. A lo largo de la narración, iremos conociendo cada vez más datos sobre todos ellos, sobre sus temores reprimidos y sus fragilidades.Pero la novela no me ha gustado, pese a estos buenos cimientos. Todo parece demasiado accidental, premeditado por la propia Barker y su juego de nombres y equívocos, quedando a veces demasiado artificial. Tampoco he logrado empatizar con los personajes, por lo raros que son y por la estructura deslavazada de la autora. Esperaba mucho más.
What do You think about Wide Open (2001)?
Having rugby-tackled Behindlings and found its descent into incoherence off-putting, I tried earlier works from Barker: Small Holdings and Reversed Forecast. The results were favorable, but it is with Wide Open that I have come to understand her particular brand of genius.Barker is Queen of the Freaks. Her novels are contrived on a grand scale with a large cast of characters who revolve around one enigmatic weirdo, in this case the shell-obsessed Roddy. Throughout the course of the novel we come to learn the significance of a batch of letters addressed to him from former lover Monica, and learn the mystery of her disappearance.On the whole though, the book is mainly an excuse to befriend the charming and warped batch of engaging and affecting characters that populate Barker's mental landscape. From fat pornographer Nathan to an outspoken teenager Lily, the dialogue seethes with originality and the prose is infectious, original and moving.Bravo.
—MJ Nicholls
This was an oddly compelling literary experience, repellent yet fascinating, like rifling through the neighbours’ dustbin just for the hell of it. Electric, daring prose from start to finish, and a highly original novel. I doubt whether it did much for tourism on the Isle of Sheppey, rather giving the impression that everyone there is sad, mad, bad or quite possibly all three. The most sane character of the lot appears to be a pornographer. It wasn’t long before I desperately wanted to slap the character Ronny (repeatedly and quite hard as it happens) but had to wait and hope that one of the other characters would do it for me. In the first half of the novel, an intricate framework of links between the various characters is built up, and every time the narrative threatens to cross the line that separates tantalising from baffling, facts are dropped in to keep things on the level. Unfortunately in the last quarter of the book I started to lose the thread, and by the end I found I couldn’t pinpoint what it was that had brought the various characters to their ultimate salvation. I suspect I would need multiple re-readings to really understand it properly.
—Jayne Charles
This book was very disappointing. Whilst reading through it chapter after chapter I was hoping there would be more going on as I got further in to the book, but there isn't. I ended up not getting to the end, but instead the last 3 chapters, because it was too boring to read. However, the character ideas were really good and different from normal books which made the book a little more interesting and made me more willing to read it. Overall it was clearly written and could have been made in to a really good book, however it dragged on too much and I felt there was no real point to it in the end.
—Daisy
