It is the spring of 1914 and a group of young students have gathered in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two parts of an intriguing love triangle and, in the first days of war, they turn to each other. As spring turns to summer, Paul volunteers for the Belgian Red Cross and tends to wounded, dying soldiers from the front line. By the time he returns, Paul must confront the fact that life and love will never be the same for him again.

In Life Class, Pat Barker returns to her most renowned subject: the human devastation and psychic damage wrought by World War One on all levels of British society. Her skill in relaying the harrowing experience of modern warfare is matched by the depth of insight she brings to the experience of love and the morality of art in a time of war. Life Class is one of her genuine masterpieces.

“This is a story about hopeful ambitions and relationships redirected and reshaped by a climate of catastrophic change.…[It] render[s] the horrors of combat with (Barker’s trademark) meticulously researched detail and piercing clarity. Secondary characters’ experiences likewise amplify into lucid microcosms of the global cataclysm that shadows every individual life.…Mature, unsentimental and searching. One of this excellent writer’s finest books.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“With great tenderness and insight, and a daring to forgo simple resolutions, Barker conveys a wartime world turned upside down.” —Mark Bostridge, The Independent

“As ever with Barker…the writing is breathtaking…sharply written and elegantly constructed.” —D. J. Taylor, The Guardian

Praise for The Regeneration Trilogy:

“A masterwork…complex and ambitious.” —New York Times Book Review

“It has been Pat Barker’s accomplishment to enlarge the scope of the contemporary English novel.” —The New Yorker

“A literary achievement…remarkable.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Some of the most powerful antiwar writing in modern fiction.” —Boston Globe

Seattle Times

People

Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

San Francisco Chronicle