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    Another World
    Another World
    Another World
    Audiobook7 hours

    Another World

    Written by Pat Barker

    Narrated by Steven Crossley

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Booker Prize-winning author Pat Barker is one of Britain's most powerful contemporary novelists. This eerie story of a troubled family in the north of England lets you experience the full force of Barker's original talent. Filled with startling images and incisive character studies, Another World reveals an uncanny reality where emotions and events from the past resurface in the present. Nick, his pregnant wife, their unruly toddler, and angry stepchildren have just moved into a Gothic manor in a rough part of Newcastle. Working unhappily together to fix up their living room, they discover an alarming portrait of a Victorian family beneath the old wallpaper. As the sins of that family seep into their lives, Nick must tend to his dying grandfather, who is dealing with his own past failures. Barker skillfully weaves these dark threads together until unspeakable violence seems ready to explode from every scene. Narrator Steven Crossley's mesmerizing performance highlights the novel's haunting quality and the intriguing questions it raises about part, present, and memory.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 15, 2008
    ISBN9781449801458
    Author

    Pat Barker

    Pat Barker's novels include Another World, Border Crossing and Noonday. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy, comprising Regeneration, which has been made into a film starring Jonathan Pryce and James Wilby, The Eye in the Door, winner of the 1993 Guardian Fiction Prize, and The Ghost Road, winner of the 1996 Booker Prize. She lives in England.

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    Reviews for Another World

    3.5/5

    173 ratings12 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Didn't start well but got into the swing eventually. However it didn't really hang together. A mishmash of stuff that could have been interesting on it's own but didn't really fit together and allow the narrative to breathe. And why the ghost story? No need for it really.
    • 4/5
      Read this book for Reading 1001, BOTM Nov 2019. I have read Regeneration by the author. In this book, set in more contemporary times we have a blended, dysfunctional family that has moved into a Victorian house in Newcastle upon tyne. The other story line is the aging grandfather, 101, impending death. He is a WWI vet who suffered PTSD. There is a overlying sinister mood in this story. The family finds a picture of the previous owner of the home that portrays violence and hatred and the that this family on the wall reflects the undertones of the current family. I also enjoyed the second story line of the aging WWI vet, grandfather who is dying and also struggling with thoughts that he is tortured by to the point that his finally words, "I am in hell", are the last words Nick has from his grandfather. Themes of effects of violence on following generations, issues of violence, ideals of innocence and goodness, and sexuality. While I liked both stories, I did not feel that the author was successful in piecing them together.
    • 3/5
      I am glad that this is the last book on my shelf by Pat Barker, because I found this to be such a depressing read. It was published in 1998 some three year after Ghost road which was the final part of her Regeneration trilogy. Another World could almost be an addendum to the Regeneration books because one of the themes of the book is an old first world war soldier’s (Geordie is 101) difficulties of coming to terms with incidents from the war. Juxtaposed with his struggles as he stares into the face of his own demise is his sons own struggles with his extended family. Nick is in the unenviable position of having to help look after his deteriorating father while trying to keep his second family from imploding: tiredness and exhaustion exasperate an already fraught situation.In my opinion there is too much going on in this story which barrels along leaving its characters strewn in its wake. The most developed character is Geordie who heroically faces his mortality while harbouring a terrible secret: usually where two threads of a storyline are run in parallel one can see connections of plot or theme, in this case the only connection seems to be the family connection, Geordie’s struggles seem to have very little bearing on the problems of Nick’s second family apart from adding to Nick’s tiredness. Barker is adept at touches of observation that seem so right and her dialogue can be spot on, but where she struggles in my opinion is in her analysis of the issues created by her storyline and this is not helped by a continually changing POV. We get snatches of characters feelings, wants and desires, but overall there is little depth to them and their actions are not always consistent in the way that Barker has presented them. There is also her theme of ghosts either from the past or in the present that seem little more than vehicles for her plot. A story about a struggling family and a first world war veteran stricken with cancer is not going to be a fun read, but Barker wants to rub her readers noses in the dirt and the filth. Sex and of course there is sex in Barker’s books is totally joyless, family members go out of their way to create problems for themselves and Geordie’s illness is graphically described . A centre of calm is provided by Helen an author and psychologist who has been recording Geordie’s war time experiences, but she is little more than a stock character. For me Barker’s eagerness to tell a story and to create a realistic scenario has resulted in a book that lacks depth. A bit of a disappointment and so three stars.
    • 2/5
      “Another person's life, observed from the outside, always has a shape and definition that one's own life lacks.”The central theme of this novel is how wounds of the past have the ability to affect the present. Nick, a Newcastle teacher, is the central character but much of the plot revolves around his 101 year old grandfather, Geordie. Geordie is dying of cancer and is deeply disturbed by memories of his time in the WWI trenches, in particular that he killed his brother there. Nick is deeply attached to his grandfather but is also suffering difficulties closer to home. Nick, his pregnant wife, stepson and son have recently moved into a Victorian house which seems to be haunted by the apparition of a young girl who was once suspected of killing her younger brother. On top of this, Nick's daughter from his first marriage has come to spend some of the summer holidays with them which seems to only inflame his stepson's, Gareth, jealousy and aggression towards his baby brother. This in many respects is the 'modern' dysfunctional family.There are obvious parallels between the generations but, perhaps surprisingly given the adept way that the author handled the Regeneration trilogy plots, these appear peculiarly forced relying as it does on two books. One which features the murder of a child in the house that the family now lives in and the other the transcript of interviews that Geordie has given to a researcher friend of Nick's. Consequently the plot feels somewhat unwieldy rather than like jigsaw pieces gradually slotting together.Equally the author seems to flit between the various characters, rather like a bee in a buttercup meadow, giving the reader a little taster of each but without really giving them any real sense of flavour meaning that they all seem to be pulling in very different directions as they struggle with their own individual issues. This largely caused me frustration rather than sympathy for any of them.The only time that the narrative seems to really come to life is when Barker plunges into the legacy of guilt that Geordie suffered because of his traumatic experiences in the trenches, his confused relationship with his brother and simply the fact that he had survived when so many others had not. He does not have an easy death either, 'I am in hell,' are his dying words. Overall Barker has created a disturbing tale which has glimpses of the power and passion that she has brought to previous pieces of work. However, its execution rather lets it down meaning that it feels contrived and lacking in something truly vital.
    • 3/5
      This was an unrelenting in your face story with characters that were very difficult to sympathise with. I found the story line very grim, particularly the detailed description of dying of cancer- far too much fact and it was difficult to know the reason why the demise of Geordie, the Somme veteran, had to be so graphic. The 2 narratives in the novel do not cohere into a very satisfying story. The storyline involving Nick's dysfunctional family just disappears in the 2nd part of the book and a lot of loose ends are left dangling. There is some excellent writing here- Pat Barker is a master of sparseness - but this fell well short for me of her other work.
    • 3/5
      A reflection on the legacies of the past, memory, intergenerational war trauma (it is Barker after all!) and the way history repeats. In the process, the family dynamics make breeding seem really unappealing ...
    • 3/5
      I'm wavering between 3 & 3.5 stars for this one but the fact I don't believe I'll ever want to reread it puts it closer to the lower score. There are a number of interesting threads to this but they don't mesh satisfactorily. Like the main character, I felt endlessly "restless, searching for some discharge of feeling" that never eventuated.
    • 2/5
      Another World is my first book by author, Pat Barker. Apparently, it was not a good place to start. Based on other reviews, this novel does not represent her potential as a writer. Therefore, as disappointed as I was by this flat, under-developed novel, I will not give up on Ms. Barker. Sometimes, when we choose to explore an author, the Library does not always have the book of one’s preference available. Better luck next time!
    • 4/5
      This book is almost enough to make you think you shouldn't have children. So much conflict amongst siblings - some of it resolved in rather horrific ways. How one would have the guts to be a step parent after reading this is beyond me. Barker again looks at life and shows it warts and all, but even with the warts there's hope - for the strong. If I were any of the people in the book I think I'd hop a train and get out of there.
    • 4/5
      Pat Barker, author of the highly recommendable "Regeneration" trilogy does the First World War again, this time through the eyes of a man taking care of his superannuated veteran grandfather, as he faces a terminal illness. She asks some important questions about memory and meaning here, if perhaps a bit didactically – our central character is a literature professor and Geordie, the veteran in question, once participated in an academic study that sought to determine whether his memory changed as the world around him did. It's easy to see how the meaning of Geordie's memories has changed as the decades has gone by. Geordie himself seems aware that as one of the last living veterans of the war, he's become something of a living political symbol, and Barker draws out the distinction between political and personal memory with considerable skill. Following a classically modernist tradition, "Another World" also asks whether a human consciousness – particularly one that is nearing its end – can meaningful preserve memories of all of those lost in what used to be called the Great War. Geordie doesn't go easy, and his wrenching final moments are haunted by the battles he experienced as a young man and the brother he lost in combat, are agonizingly poignant and unblinkingly honest. Barker demonstrates both how wars often live in those who have experienced them long after the shooting has stopped and how finite and perishable human memory can be. "Another World" is not an easy read. Barker also seems very aware of the ever-increasing distance between the generation who experienced the war and ourselves. She casts an eye on the family-centered Victorian morality that the incredible carnage of the war helped discredit, and while it's not exactly surprising that she might uncover some dark undercurrents, the images and stories she uses to do this are genuinely chilling. Her portrayal as a modern family – fragmented by distance, divorce and the intrusion of technology – can be problematic. Particularly troubling is Gareth, a fairly standard example of the emotionally dysfunctional, hoodie-wearing juvenile delinquent of the modern British imagination. Still, even these characters are remarkably well rounded, and Barker's prose never falters. She's good about bodies, drawing an effective contrast between the pregnant Fran, whose body is about to bring forth new life, and Geordie, whose body is scarred by his past and is breaking down before his eyes. Most importantly, perhaps, she's got voice, that hard-to-define quality that makes writing both human and supremely readable. It's far from reassuring, but it's hard to deny that "Another World" is anything less than novel-writing done right.
    • 3/5
      Another World by Pat Barker is a novel whose parts do not add up to the sum of the whole. There is no getting there in this novel, for there is nowhere to go. With the past dripping into the present through a ghost and a hidden mural in the family's home the novel has enough of the past to create interest; yet, it does not. The characters are well drawn, but there is no follow through and the reader is left wondering what to make of it all. This was a disappointment for this reader who immensely enjoyed the author's Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road). By all means, read Pat Barker, but start with her earlier trilogy.
    • 1/5
      Deeply depressing and disappointing. Yet another book with such a completely negative world view that it lost all credibility. Am I the only person who finds books where everyone has a rotten time, all of the time, ridiculous?