SOURCE: A review of The Century's Daughter, in The Village Voice Literary Supplement, No. 49, October, 1986, pp. 3-4.

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 searched for her past in a bed of coals to begin Chapter 2 of Pat Barker's The Century's Daughter, I felt annoyed if not betrayed. Just when I was all set to find out how Liza was going to get on with the social worker she'd met in Chapter 1, Barker was pulling a flashback on me. What a drag. But then I remembered that although Barker adheres skillfully and unquestioningly to realist convention, you don't read her for narrative momentum—she has no special gift for that particular illusion of coherence. The most formally satisfying of her three books—1982's Union Street, a collection of loosely...