Nicola Barker

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Biography

Nicola Barker was born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1966. She spent part of her life in South Africa but returned to England when she was 14. She was educated at King's College, Cambridge.

She is the author of two acclaimed collections of darkly comic and surreal short stories: Love Your Enemies (1993), which won the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and Heading Inland (1996), which won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. A third collection of short stories, The Three Button Trick, was published in June 2003.

Her novels include: Reversed Forecast (1994); Small Holdings (1995); Wide Open (1998), the story of two brothers coming to terms with their past, which won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2000; Five Miles from Outer Hope (2000), about a teenage girl living on a small island situated off the Devon coast; and Behindlings, published in 2002.

Clear (2004), was inspired by the transparent plastic box in which David Blaine was suspended near Tower Bridge, London; and Darkmans (2007), is the story of Edward IV's court jester and his biographer. Darkmans was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2008 Ondaatje Prize.

Nicola Barker's latest novel is Burley Cross Postox Theft (2010), a comic epistolary novel.

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Genres (in alphabetical order)

Fiction, Short stories

Bibliography

Love Your Enemies   Faber and Faber, 1993

Reversed Forecast   Faber and Faber, 1994

Small Holdings   Faber and Faber, 1995

Heading Inland   Faber and Faber, 1996

Wide Open   Faber and Faber, 1998

Five Miles from Outer Hope   Faber and Faber, 2000

Behindlings   Flamingo, 2002

The Three Button Trick: Selected Stories   Flamingo, 2003

Clear   Fourth Estate, 2004

Darkmans   Fourth Estate, 2007

Burley Cross Postbox Theft   Fourth Estate, 2010

Read about books by Nicola Barker at encompassculture.com - the British Council's book database and global online book club

Buy books by Nicola Barker at Amazon.co.uk

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Prizes and awards

1993   David Higham Prize for Fiction   Love Your Enemies

1994   PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award   (joint winner)   Love Your Enemies

1996   Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize   Heading Inland

2000   International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award   Wide Open

2007   Man Booker Prize for Fiction   (shortlist)   Darkmans

2008   Ondaatje Prize   (shortlist)   Darkmans

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Critical Perspective

As a novelist and writer of short stories, Nicola Barker has come to be highly regarded by the literary establishment.

An overview of her style and thematic concerns must necessarily refer to the preponderance of outcasts in her work. The reader is often forced to find, if not affection for, then recognition of those who are traditionally given scant regard in society. These include the unloved, the unlovable, the ugly and inept. Her landscapes are often harsh; barely inhabited islands or desolate suburbs are used as apt spaces for the isolated characters. The affection for the outcast is brought about by the humour that is indicative of her oeuvre, which draws on the surreal and black comedy to undermine assumptions of normality. Her work, in turn, tends to deride prescriptive expectations of what should be inside a ‘proper’ novel.

Barker’s first published work is a collection of ten short stories, Love Your Enemies (1993). These include ‘Layla’s Nose Job’ and ‘The Butcher’s Apprentice’. Barker’s attraction to the use of the surreal comes into view with these and other stories. Other collections include Heading Inland (1996), and The Three Button Trick (2003), which offers a selection from both this work and Love Your Enemies.

As well as these short story collections, Barker is also a prolific novelist. Her first novel, Reversed Forecast (1994), draws on a betting term for its title and uses bird allergies and gambling as themes. Small Holdings (1995) is set in a park in North London and has Phil, Doug and a one-legged ex-museum curator called Saleem as its main protagonists. In 2003, these novels were re-published together as an omnibus under the main title Reversed Forecast.

In Wide Open (1998), winner of the 2000 International Impac Dublin Literary Award, a bleak atmosphere is created by the majority of the action taking place on the Isle of Sheppey. Violence and paedophilia are strong undercurrents as the emotionally isolated characters seek to escape from their pasts. This is written in such a way as to challenge the reader’s expectation of a neat, linear narrative. As though to assert the improbability of those who are so damaged by their history finding a happy ending, closure is avoided. Lives that have been fragmented continue to be fragmented at the end of the novel.

The use of a stark backdrop is maintained in Five Miles From Outer Hope (2000), as a dysfunctional, unbelievably quirky family exist in a ramshackle hotel on an island off the coast of Devon. This is set, for the most part, in the summer of 1981, which is signified playfully with references to the band Soft Cell and reported news of the time. It is narrated by Medve, a six-foot-three-inches tall, 16-year-old girl. Her voice sounds authentic, but it is arguable whether the strained musings of a 16-year-old is of universal interest. This work gains weight, however, with the introduction of La Roux, the South African army deserter, and the flash forwards to the future are particularly resonant.

Behindlings (2002), draws on Wesley, who first appeared in the collection, Heading Inland. The Behindlings appear to be his followers as Barker investigates the allure of charisma. Alex Clark’s review for the Guardian, ‘Lost in Fog’ (28 September 2002), argues that this work is, at times, bewildering: ‘Barker’s writing is fast-paced and frantic to the point of mania, but it can also be slapdash and pointlessly kooky'. That Clark finds this novel praiseworthy overall, perhaps demonstrates Barker’s ability to coerce the reader to take interest in her characterisation even when the plot is not wholly understandable.

The stylistic choice to draw on contemporary events, such as the actions of the murderer Jack Henry Abbott being referenced in Five Miles From Outer Hope, can be seen once more in Clear: A Transparent Novel (2004). In the earlier novel, Medve’s allusions to actual occurrences often feel artificially imposed as reminders of the era.  In Clear, though, Barker is more fluent in depicting the context.  David Blaine and his orchestrated spectacle, in which he lived in a transparent box by the Thames for 44 days without food, is central to the plot. Both the stunt and the crowd’s reaction are the main narrative threads. The reaction to his public self-imposed starvation becomes the means for the novel to engage with values in contemporary society. Through the narrator, Adair, a male perspective is offered and is one that equivocates, yet is also obsessed by, the hungry artist. The literary references, including Kafka and Shane, signify a more complex interest in the influence of life on art and vice versa.
 
As mentioned in ‘A Writer’s Life: Nicola Barker’ in the Telegraph (29 August 2004), Clear was written over the space of three months as she drew her inspiration from the spirit of the time. The repugnance she felt towards an article in the Guardian, written by Catherine Bennett, which celebrated the derision of Blaine, drove Barker to write a letter in his defence in which she argued the contempt shown to Blaine was ‘bad manners’. The novel followed shortly after.

In reviews of Barker’s novels, she is repeatedly described as original and inventive. At times her writing strains to be too obscure; however, in fairness, this may be seen as a by-product of her attempts to avoid churning out a formulaic realist text. The humour used in her writing, even in the darkest of pieces such as Wide Open, demonstrates an ability to shift the tone unexpectedly. Her penchant for using marginalised characters as narrators, or as central figures in the twisting plots, exemplifies a style that resists conventional thinking. These characters also symbolise a desire to undermine the worn-out category of normality. 

Julie Ellam, 2006

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Contact information

Publisher (General enquiries) Fourth Estate HarperCollins Publishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London  W6 8JB England Tel: +44 (0)20 8741 7070 Fax: +44 (0)20 8307 4440 http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

Agent Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd 20 Powis Mews London  W11 1JN England Tel: +44 (0)20 7221 3717 Fax: +44 (0)20 7229 9084 http://www.rcwlitagency.co.uk

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