Pat Barker is a Booker Prize winning author whose novel Union Street I've previously reviewed. This is a slight novel, a slice of post war England about a young boy raised by a single mom, his Nan, and other women of the neighbourhood.
Colin is left on his own most of the time, as his mom Viv works nights at a club - waitress is a polite word for her job serving drinks in a sexy fawn outfit. Sometimes Mrs. Hennigan from downstairs looks in on him, but he has plenty of time to wander down the carnival, sneak into the latest war pictures with his underage friends, or play combat games in the bombed out houses nearby. Always wondering who his father was, he skipped out when Colin was born, a secret his mother won't discuss. One night a neighbour takes him to her spiritual meeting, where a spectre is seen behind him. That is the closest he will get to a man who wasn't there, and there is talk at school about a boy being raise without a male presence. His story is interspersed with a fantasy of being a resistance fighter against the Gestapo and evil Kommandant von Strohm - a story peopled with characters from his real life including Bernard, the sweetshop keeper who likes to dress as a woman. Together the resistance tries to outwit the Nazis by burning codebooks - although there may be one amongst them who is a traitor, and must be silenced.
Barker weaves these stories together seamlessly, and it seems the walls are paper thin - Colin and the neighbours around him are woven into each other's lives as easily as his spy fantasies come and go. It's a vivid story of the time and place (she's an excellent writer with a keen ear for dialogue) but this doesn't move very far forward. Taking place over three days, it's easy to see it continuing on into the unforeseen future without much change.
1988 / Tradeback / 158 pages
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