Toby's Room

by Pat Barker

Hardcover, 2012

Call number

FIC BAR

Collection

Publication

Doubleday (2012), Edition: 1st, 320 pages

Description

A portrait of an upper-class family torn by World War I centers on an anguished sister whose beloved brother goes missing in action, in an epic tale that explores the experiences of the family members and the working-class people who support them.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Cariola
As a fan of Barker's brilliant Regeneration series, I had high hopes for Toby's Room, but I confess to being somewhat underwhelmed. Art student Elinor Brooke, familiar to readers of Life Class, returns at the heart of the story. World War I is peering over the horizon but has not yet crossed the
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English shores, and Elinor's greatest concerns are her art classes at the Slade, her parents' dissolving marriage, and her close relationship with her older brother Toby. But something disturbing happens, causing a rupture that brother and sister can never quite repair. Still, Elinor persists with her classes and Toby finished his medical degree. And then the war takes over.

Fast forward a few years. Toby has signed up as a medic and is serving in France, and Elinor is getting a bit bored with the Slade, uncertain of what she will do when her studies are completed. News comes that Toby has gone missing in action and is presumed dead. Shortly after, a package with his belongings arrives, and Elinor finds a brief note among them, addressed to her. In it, Toby mysteriously reveals that he won't be coming back. Convinced that he must still be alive, Elinor sets out to solve the mystery. She enlists the help of Paul Tarrant, a fellow Slade student and former lover who has just returned from the war with a severe leg injury, and the two of them focus on another former student, Kit Neville, who served with Toby as a stretcher bearer. Kit is among the patients of Dr. Harold Gillies (a factual person, the 'father' of modern plastic surgery) at Queen Mary Hospital, all of whom have suffered traumatic facial injuries.

Fortunately for Elinor, she is offered a job by Henry Tonks (another real person), her former professor, drawing the faces of the injured. The purpose of the drawings is educational: to assist Dr. Gillies in facial reconstruction and to create an archive of his efforts for other surgeons. In this capacity, she is able to visit Kit, but he is either unable or unwilling to tell her anything about Toby's apparent demise. Paul strikes up an uneasy friendship with Kit, partly out of sympathy for a fellow artist and wounded warrior, but partly in hopes of aiding Elinor.

The truth is finally revealed in the last pages of the book. Don't worry--no spoilers here. But I am rather puzzled at just how Toby got from Point A to Point C. Barker seems to imply a cause-and-effect between two events that just doesn't make sense to me. Putting that aside, however, there are many things to commend in Toby's Room. The characters are well drawn and, as always, Barker gives us a portrait of war and its effects on human lives that is both brutal and poignant. While I can't recommend this novel as highly as Regeneration, it is certainly worth reading, especially for Barker fans or for those interested in the impact of the war on those at home and the extraordinary efforts to mend the wounded.
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LibraryThing member Laura400
This immaculately constructed novel is a testament to Pat Barker's skill and power as a novelist. With her usual felicitous writing style, she carries the reader along effortlessly. One doesn't immediately notice how complex this book is. But the structure sprawls over months and years, with stops
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and starts, gaps, changes of points of view, and flashbacks.

The story is often raw and shocking. We are confronted with horror. The actual battles of World War I are not the main horror in this volume. The characters Paul and Kit must cope with their memories of World War I, and its disfiguring effects. Their friend Elinor has to deal with problems of becoming an artist, but also with difficult relationships with friends and family. Most troubling is her relationship with her brother Toby, whose mysterious death in the war brings Elinor into contact again with Paul and Kit.

"Toby's Room" is not just the title, but also the novel's central conceit, the place that haunts Elinor and the book, as the war haunts Paul and Kit. The novel holds out uncertain hope that the characters might leave behind their trauma and start anew. As one would close a door for the last time and move somewhere new.
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LibraryThing member Helenliz
This is the second in a series, but it is perfectly readable as a stand alone. Set in two phases, the first part, in 1912, focuses on Elinor & Toby and their family. Toby is at medical school in London. Elinor at the Slade, and starting to wonder what to do thereafter. The family appears to have
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everything under control but the tensions are simmering beneath the surface. Then there happens an event that has the ability to tear the family apart, should it ever come to light. But the siblings suppress the event and carry on, although there remains a tension between them that can't be put aside.
At the Slade, Elinor joins a course in dissection in order to better understand the human form and improve her drawing. In this phase we also meet Kit Neville and Paul Tarrant, both of whom are very different men and each of which has a part to play later.
Phase 2 of the novel takes place in 1917, when Toby is notified as missing, presumed killed. Paul is back in London with a wounded leg, Kit returns with severe facial injuries. Elinor is determined to know more about what happened to Toby, and this enhanced by a letter she finds addressed to her in his belongings when they are shipped back.
It deals with the feelings of those left at home, as well as those returning from the front, the battles themselves actually play only a small part in the narrative. The interplay between the two very different men is really well done. At times Elinor feels a bit hard and angular, she is struggling to work out her place in the world and the world as it has been turned on its head, both on the world scale and the personal - the reaction to grief is especially interesting. It is a hugely personal thing, with each person's grief being unique, Elinor's takes its shape through art. In the aftermath of Toby's death., the family can no longer play their roles and each of them have to renegotiate their relationships with each other, and that causes the separation between Toby & Elinor's parents to become fact, rather than disguised fiction. This is not the book I thought it would be, the event in phase 1 of the book sets up tensions that echo through the reminder of the story, but neither is it all tied up neatly at the end. The relationships remain unresolved, the future is unclear. There is one, and that's a start. It is really beautifully written, somewhat understated, yet somehow was a page turner, I had to get to the end. Really very good.
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LibraryThing member michaelbartley
I really enjoyed this book, Ms. Barker brings up a number of issues and questions in this novel. Grief, war, how we react to it, love, relationships, art. Ms. Barker writes about ww 1 and how good people do evil things, what evil is. no answers to soap box she is a mirror to the human condition
LibraryThing member SigmundFraud
Set in WW1 as is her prize winning Regeneration trilogy. Toby's Room" begins in 1912 and ends in 1917. The reader is introduced to the Brooke family - parents who are estranged both physically and emotionally. Three children, Rachel is the oldest and is married, and the two younger, Toby and Elinor
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are, respectively, a medical student and an art student, and live in London. I finished the book but it was an effort. The writing is good but I didn't care much for the characters. If you are a Pat Barker fan, do read it. If not, it is not essential.
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LibraryThing member techeditor
What a surprise! I had never read anything by Pat Barker until TOBY'S ROOM. It is not simply a novel; this is literature. And what a pleasure it is to read!

Please read the synopsis above.

This book is apparantly a sequel to LIFE CLASS. But I read TOBY'S ROOM first and loved it anyway. Now I'll have
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to do it out of order and read the first book second.

If you are not familiar with Barker but you appreciate fine writing, pick up one of her books. I can vouch for TOBY'S ROOM.
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LibraryThing member lxydis
Pat Barker, as always, writes a brilliant novel about WWI, with great fictional characters interpersed with--and based on--fascinating real ones like Henry Tonks and Dr Gillies, the father of plastic surgery.
LibraryThing member cameling
Pat Barker illuminates the destruction of a family when Toby, a favourite son, is missing and believed killed in action during WWI. His parents already fragile marriage disintegrate following his death. Details of his death are not disclosed and his sister, Elinor, is desperate to find answers. Her
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obsession with her brother and her deep grief following his death is captured in all her paintings as she turns into a recluse in the family mansion. Her attempts at uncovering details of his death are futile and she senses there is more to his death than his officers are willing to disclose. In desperation, she turns to an old lover for help. Will his dark secrets follow him to his unmarked grave or will she get the answers that will allow her closure?

Written with great sensitivity, this was a difficult book to put down.
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LibraryThing member aadyer
A very well written, relatively involving book telling the stories of several people all caught up in em selves, the Great War & it's consequences. As characters, I found none of them strangely that empathic, & I found it difficult to get involved with them although the pacing of the story made it
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easy to read. Some aspects of the novel I found almost unpalatable & it's was not just in the sense of the War either. It was more the feelings & events prior to it that I found hard to understand or seem plausible. A good read, intriguing at times, very evocative about the primitive conditions associated with plastic surgery of that time & easy to read too. I don't think I'd recommend this, unless you have a specific interest or have read Life Class & want to find out what happened next. I haven't read Life Class & this hasn't made me want to go out & get it.
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LibraryThing member oparaxenos
Vintage Pat Barker. Pat Barker writes about damaged people so well, and this book is no exception. Well worth a read.
LibraryThing member johnwbeha
I approach a Pat Barker book with a sense of trepidation. I know that what I read will be fiction, but I also know that it will be the truth and that that truth will be both uncomfortable and immensely sad. Perhaps that it in inevitable once the First World War becomes part of the background to the
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story. The more we know about that conflict, the deeper the sadness at the loss of much of a generation and the greater the anger at those who caused the war and those who were in charge of its execution.
As always Pat Barker writes relatively simply but often beautifully drawing us into the lives of characters both imagined and real. Her creations are almost never wholly sympathetic; it almost seems as if they are holding back part of themselves to stop us getting too close.
There is no doubt that she is a great writer, one who deserves to be read by all of us who like our literary entertainment leavened by deep compassion for our race.
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LibraryThing member Eye_Gee
Normally I'm a big Pat Barker fan but I did not enjoy this audio book. It could have been the narrator, who was very plummy. Onward...
LibraryThing member PDCRead
I had never heard of Pat Barker before, and read this as a monthly book group read.

It is a sad story about a brother an sister, who share a very dark secret, and is set just before the First World War. The family they come from is slightly dysfunctional, but fairly well to do, and Elinor has a
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tempestuous relationship with her mother. Because of this she trusts her brother intimately. WW1 starts and Toby is called up, Elinaor is at art school, and sees little of her brother now. He sings up, and is joined by a fellow art student.

Towards the end of the war, the family receive the standard message, that Toby is missing presumed dead. It turn out that one of Elinors fellow students was there when he died, and she is desperate to find out what happened. After some persuasion she does, and can draw a line under his life.

It is a melancholy story, and I found it very readable.
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LibraryThing member Ken-Me-Old-Mate
Not having read anything previously by this author I came to it fresh, as it were, with no pre-conceptions or expectations. I was very disappointed, the characters for the most part were bland and very poorly fleshed out. The one character that wasn't bland was inexplicably loud without any real
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explanation as to why.

The "shocking" scene very early on in the book was not picked up later on and I could not understand why it was included in the first place as it had no relevance to the story or the characters as they unfolded. What on earth was the author thinking by including such a scene without any follow-up in any way shape or form.

To be honest, I found the whole thing pretty much irrelevant. The fact that it was set in the First World War sent to be a contrivance rather than an intent. It added nothing apart from background. If you haven't read it, don't bother.
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LibraryThing member wbell539
Somewhat like a television mystery.

Pages

320

ISBN

0385524366 / 9780385524360
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