Life Class by Pat Barker

Not quite the impact of the Regeneration trilogy. This is a curious love story set against the background of the Slade and the outbreak of WW1. The scenes at Ypres are beautifully constructed and very well-written, those depicting various parts of London, rather less so. The reference to real people is inconsistent, almost simple name-dropping in the case of Augustus John, and scarcely more convincing with regard to Lady Otteline Morrell. There’s something not quite right about the characters of Paul, Kit and Elinor and I’m not sure what it is. Paul and Kit are naturally suspicious of each other, both rivals for Elinor and at times she appears to be playing them off against each other. At other times she is distant, aloof even, seemingly unaware of the turbulence she is causing among her suitors and so determined to carry on painting in spite of familial pressures to ‘do her bit’ for the war effort. Two peripheral characters are interesting, the unfortunate Lewis a Quaker volunteer orderly, and Catherine Stein whose father is interned because of his German origin. More could have been made of Lewis’ Quaker convictions and Catherine’s treatment.

These two characters represent different kinds of ‘otherness’ which would have been worth exploring in the context of patriotism, duty and suchlike. It is Catherine’s situation that particularly interests me because my paternal grandfather, a Swiss national with a pronounced Swiss-German accent lived in London throughout the war. After some unfortunate incidents in 1914 in which he was presumed to be German and abused for it, he spent most of the war inside the boarding house which he ran with my grand-mother, also Swiss, but seemingly better integrated into the local community.

However, it is the ending of the book that is particularly unsatisfactory, nothing is resolved and the book seems to have been hurried to a premature end, obviously to allow for the possibility of a sequel. In the final pages Elinor twice asks Paul, ‘What are we going to do?’ Yes, what are they going to do? I am going to have to read Toby’s Room to find out.