Another World / by Pat Barker

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Known for her thought provoking literary novels, author and historian Pat Barker is a skilled writer and a worthy craftsman of historical and contemporary fiction, her Regeneration trilogy--three historical stories concentrated in the World War I era--garnering critical acclaim. Another World examines the contrasting lives of a modern blended family and the father of the clan's 101-year-old grandfather, a World War I veteran living out his last days.

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Nick and Fran have been married for 3 years, each previously divorced with one child--Nick the father of 14-year-old Miranda, Fran the mother of 11-year-old Gareth--and having had a third child, toddler Jasper, just recently between them. While it hasn't been easy with both Nick and Fran working hard on the job and at home, Gareth and Miranda constantly at odds, Jasper needing round-the-clock attention, etc., things malinger on in the haphazard way of families everywhere, sparse outings and family togetherness given a priority just as the more pressing issues swallow up time, energy and resources.

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Meanwhile across town, Nick's very elderly grandfather Geordie, who's outlived both of Nick's parents, spends his last days remembering a very long life which has spanned the entire twentieth century. Geordie may seem old and a bit senile but he's still with it enough to remember his early boyhood in the late Victorian era, the formidable way of life in the rough blue-collar mining town of Newcastle, his youth alongside peers in the trenches during the first World War and, most of all, his terrifying experience on the battlefield of the Somme where he witnessed the grisly death of his younger brother.

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Barker really is a unique talent, subtly remarkable in the way she fabricates a story, her prose at once elegant and engaging yet reverberating poignancy and authenticity through piercing observations. Entirely different worlds are portrayed through Geordie's steadily decaying body, his century of thoughts, feelings, events and relationships revealed through a solitary repose, a milieu well contrasted by Nick and Fran's more conventionalized balancing act which includes son Gareth's violent outbursts and a new baby on the way. Each generation forms its own distinct realm, possesses its own misunderstood dimensions. But even as the boundaries of time and age are reiterated, strange similarities bind families and people together. Because, as Barker is so apt to unveil, each individual is merely a continuation of all the generations of their ancestors, their lives a collective embodiment of the world then and now.