Toby's Room by Pat Barker

 review by Maryom

"Pat Barker returns to the First World War in Toby's Room, a dark, compelling novel of human desire, wartime horror and the power of friendship.
When Toby is reported 'Missing, Believed Killed', another secret casts a lengthening shadow over Elinor's world: how exactly did Toby die - and why? Elinor determines to uncover the truth. Only then can she finally close the door to Toby's room. Moving from the Slade School of Art to Queen Mary's Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in the rebuilding of the shattered faces of the wounded, Toby's Room is a riveting drama of identity, damage, intimacy and loss. Toby's Room is Pat Barker's most powerful novel yet."


When this first arrived with us it was read and reviewed by The Mole  but I'd always intended reading it myself. With other -unreviewed books piling up, it took a while for me to get round to it - and when I did I wasn't overly impressed so I didn't put up my own thoughts. Then, earlier this week, I read a review of it on  Beauty Is  A Sleeping Cat blog as part of this year's Literature and War Readalong, so I've decided to chip in with my bit after all.

Elinor and her brother Toby are closer than normal siblings; a dangerous closeness that leads to incest and guilt which shadows Elinor's life afterwards. Via art school and medical training, the story moves forward to WW1 and Toby's death. The details of it aren't made public and Elinor is determined to find out what precisely happened. Meanwhile, she's accepted a position drawing and documenting the surgery involved in facial reconstruction which brings her into contact with mutual friends who might hold the key to Toby's death.

Despite all the praise lavished on it, this wasn't a book that grabbed me at all. I couldn't really grasp where the story was going; first it seemed to head one way, then move off at a tangent.  Was it meant to be a story of family secrets or artistic development or the horrors of war? Perhaps this randomness is more like 'real' life than fiction - but it failed to capture me because of it.
A lot of the characters also fell flat, seeming rather two-dimensional and hollow. Elinor particularly, though torn between closeness and repulsion for Toby, mainly came over as cold and unfeeling, and I just didn't care what happened to her. In checking links etc for this review I've discovered that several of the main characters, Elinor, Paul Tarrant and Kit Neville, appeared in a previous book by Pat Barker, Life Class set at the Slade School of Art and I wonder if not having read that has made a difference to my reading of Toby's Room.
I didn't think there was too much of a mystery about what happened to Toby - maybe there was for Elinor but not for me, picking up the clues as I read along.
All in all, it just left me rather unmoved and uncaring.

Maryom's review - 3 stars
Publisher - Penguin
Genre - adult, WW1

Toby's Room by Pat Barker

Closure
Review by The Mole

The story starts in 1912. Elinor and her brother, Toby, are also best friends and share secrets. While Elinor is at Slade art school and her brother studies medicine close by, she meets Kit and Paul and the 4 of them are to find their lives touching throughout the forthcoming war years. The story then skips forward to 1917 and Toby is reported 'Missing, Believed Killed' and Elinor has difficulty accepting this. Someone must know for sure what happened.

The first half of the story hinges around Elinor and her determination to become an accomplished artist, despite the dependence others seem to place on her; Toby when he's seriously ill; her mother when the news of Toby is delivered; Paul when he returns from France, injured. During this part of the story we encounter some of the truly horrific facial injuries that soldiers actually sustained during the first world war.

The second half of the story is Kit's back story. Kit worked as a stretcher bearer under Toby's command on the very front line and is the most likely person to know what happened to him. Suffering a facial injury and dreaming (or are these nightmares?) under the effects of morphine for his pain we learn of the horrors of the front line and the sheer terror Kit lived under.

While all the horrors painted by Barker come through clearly and impact the reader, that impact is not presented in the stomach churning way that it could turn squeamish readers off, more that they make you think that 'yes, there must have been many people that were maimed in this way and had to live with it after the war' whether that injury was bodily or mental.

A book that is extremely riveting and thought provoking covering issues that many people won't be comfortable with but in a way that makes it totally acceptable. Also, despite, great loss in the story this is not really a tear jerker as it manages to stand to one side on all these issues.

So many books I have read lately I have not 'enjoyed' - but what does that mean? A happy ending? A happy getting there? But that's not required to feel it was a great read, one you couldn't put down and were hankering to get back to and that you end up glad you read and continue to think about after you have finished it. This was certainly one of those books.

Publisher - Penguin
Genre - Adult Historical Fiction

Buy Toby's Room from Amazon