Book Review
Life Class By PAT BARKER
Reviewed by PEGGY BARNETT
Pat Barker is an English writer, a winner of the Booker Prize, who is noted also for her Regeneration Trilogy about World War I. She returns to that time in Life Class, once again including historical figures in her story. This time, however, her focus is on the world of art, and how it fares in wartime.

Henry Tonks (the historical figure) teaches at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. In his life drawing class is protagonist Paul Tarrant. Paul is skillful but has not been able to reveal emotion in his work. At the Slade, he meets Elinor Brooke, a scholarship student who seems less intimidated by the great Tonks.

He also becomes friends with a more successful artist, Kit Neville, with whom Elinor is half in love. Then Paul encounters Teresa Halliday, and "falls hard," as they say. The course of loves does not run smooth, as they also say. Teresa has a creepy husband in the background. They are separated; he is abusive. Paul becomes involved.

Barker moves on as the leading men try to enlist in the army as the war begins. Both are rejected, but they then turn to the Belgian Red Cross and become ambulance drivers and amateur nurses. Paul serves at a makeshift hospital on the Ypres front. The scenes where he works with the mutilated soldiers returning from battle are vivid and frightening.

He reluctantly befriends a young Quaker who moves into the hut that Paul has called home. Art has taken a temporary backseat, but Paul is still struggling to paint and finds a subject worthy of emotional investment when he paints an orderly treating a gravely injured patient. Even realizing that he has done his best work, he is insecure: "These men suffer so much more than he does, more than he can imagine. In the face of their suffering, isn't it self-indulgent to think about his own feelings?"

Letters between Elinor and Paul form several chapters. Their relationship has deepened beyond friendship, and she pretends to be a nurse so that she can visit him near Ypres. Elinor refuses to give up her art in order to serve the war effort, though she feels guilty. Paul is absorbed in his duties at the front, but does take leave after he is injured.

World War I is very much present in Life Class, but the love story is poignant, too. Life Class is available at the Mary Willis Library.

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