The Haunt A L Barker 9780571259762 Books
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Originally published in 1999, The Haunt, set in a seedy, decaying hotel on the Cornish coast, was to be the final entry in A.L. Barker's brilliant fifty-year writing career. "The Haunt is the novel that A. L. Barker had just finished [in 1998] when she was struck down by a disabling illness...[It] is probably her best...It is an examination of what being haunted means, and whether we can do anything about it. Auden once said that there is nothing to be done about it. We must sit it out. This is grim advice. But if A. L. Barker is saying this too - and I think she is - she doesn't say it grimly. She says it lightly, not cynically but hilariously. She understands that there can be pleasure alongside unease the delicious first stirrings of infidelity, the comforts of offered love to the old and ridiculous. She knows us all." (Jane Gardam, Spectator).
The Haunt A L Barker 9780571259762 Books
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Tags : The Haunt [A. L. Barker] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Originally published in 1999, The Haunt, set in a seedy, decaying hotel on the Cornish coast, was to be the final entry in A.L. Barker's brilliant fifty-year writing career. The Haunt is the novel that A. L. Barker had just finished [in 1998] when she was struck down by a disabling illness...[It] is probably her best...It is an examination of what being haunted means,A. L. Barker,The Haunt,Faber and Faber,0571259766,Fiction Literary,General & Literary Fiction,Modern & contemporary fiction,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
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The Haunt A L Barker 9780571259762 Books Reviews
Have you discovered A. L. Barker yet? This British novelist has been compared to Iris Murdoch, but I find The Haunt, at least, more in keeping with the work of Shena Mackay, Mary Wesley, or even Fay Weldon. Very brief, almost telegraphic style combined with ultra-witty dialogue and a constant stream of humor that turns sweet or bitter depending upon the situation.
The plot of this short, almost hypnotic novel centers around a Cornish village and the people assembled there over a brief period of time. There is an older couple retired from London, an impetuous woman with her second husband in the historical home she fell in love with years earlier (not to mention the first husband, an impecunious artist who appears on the scene), a young woman with a hilariously annoying small son, a pair of hoteliers . . . the cast is all memorable and all evenhandedly dealt with as they interact and connect and bump up against each other. It's the stuff of Restoration comedy, in a way, though the tone is also quite impersonal, as if the people and events are being seen from far away.
The Haunt is not really an easy read, though you can skate right through it in no time if you choose to stay on the surface. There are allusions to earlier scenes, assumptions the author credits you with being able to make, and all kinds of verbal shorthand. As Jane Austen would say, it is not a novel written for "dull elves." Instead, it is intelligent, very funny, and one of a kind. Highly recommended.
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