Life Class: A Novel

Pat Barker

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jan 29, 2008 - Fiction - 311 pages

From the Booker Prize–winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy, an acknowledged masterpiece of modern fiction, Life Class is an exceptional new novel of artists and lovers caught in the maelstrom of the Great War.

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.

What people are saying

Review: Life Class

User Review  - Courtney Johnston - Goodreads

Pat Barker's books set in World War One continue to blow me away. Her “Regeneration” trilogy (“Regeneration,” “The Eye in the Door” and “The Ghost Road”) - centred on lightly fictionalised versions of ...

Review: Life Class

User Review  - Kristine Brancolini - Goodreads

I just finished Life Class and I'm thinking about rereading parts of its sequel Toby's Room. I definitely would recommend reading these two books in order, instead of the way that I read them -- Toby ...

About the author

Pat Barker is the author of the highly acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration; The Eye in the Door, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize; and The Ghost Road, winner of the Booker Prize; as well as seven other novels, most recently Double Vision. She lives in England.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Life Class: A Novel
• Author: Pat Barker
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008
• ISBN: 0385524358, 9780385524353
• Length: 311 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Psychological