Pat Barker Summary

Pat Barker is a nearly pure novelist: she writes no short stories, no poetry, but, beginning with her first novel, Union Street (1982), immediately declared herself as a major novelist. In the followi... Read more

Critical Essay by Eileen Fairweather Being hailed as "Lawrentian" might thrill some new writers, but not Pat Barker…. [Her novel may be] the latest, long over-due working-class m... Read more

Critical Essay by Katha Pollitt Pat Barker's extraordinary first novel, "Union Street," deserved every bit of the high praise heaped on it…. Set in England's grim a... Read more

Critical Essay by Kate Fullbrook [Union Street] is lost in that sometimes interesting but always dangerous area that looms invitingly between literature and the social worker's casebook. Altho... Read more

Critical Essay by Jeffrey Schaire [Union Street] is a product of the grim wasteland of England's industrial northeast. It is the hard winter of 1973; a miner's strike amplifies a landsc... Read more

Critical Essay by Diane Cole Barker's characters may sound less like material for serious drama than a shelfload of case histories, but Barker details the particularities of each life so richl... Read more

In the following positive review of The Century's Daughter, Christgau argues that Barker's themes are well served by the novel's flashback structure. As 84-year-old Liza Wright... Read more

In the following excerpt, Birch favorably assesses Barker's use of language and insights into her characters' lives in The Man Who Wasn't There. [Pat Barker's] novels ha... Read more