Life Class - Pat Barker

 Life Class is the first of Barker's second World War I trilogy, as far as I know unnamed, the follow-up or complement of the award-winning Regeneration Trilogy.   Regeneration told us things we really didn't know about the war, in particular the never-discussed subject of the jitters, shell-shock, or PTSD as it is called today.   It had its real-life heroes - Owen and Sassoon - mixed with fictional characters.   It also gave us a meaningful woman's take on the situation through the nurses at Craigavon Hospital where traumatized soldiers were given ground-breaking experimental treatment.

The second trilogy is about art students at London's Slade School.   Here some of the real-life people are flimsily disguised.   You don't need a post-graduate degree from the Courtauld to recognise Kit Neville as the flawed and brilliant Christopher Nevin.   In fact you don't need much background knowledge to know all this stuff.   It's common knowledge, entry-level stuff.   I quite liked Toby's Room, the second in the trilogy, because the loss of a young life was beautifully and insightfully done.   I'm afraid Life Class is more cliched than insightful.   The real people were much more interesting, though it's far too early in the war to get too involved with the one who interests me most, the surgeon-turned-art-tutor Henry Tonks.

The thing about World War I is that it was a complete waste of time.   Hundreds of thousands of young lives were squandered in horrific circumstances.   Barker tries to describe the horror by setting all of the war action in a field hospital.   Unfortunately her key character, Paul Tarrant, just isn't interesting enough to take us into the heart of darkness.   He blocks it out and so, I'm afraid, do we.

Nothing by Pat Barker can ever be bad.   She is a magnificent writer but not always the best deviser of stories.   Regeneration was brilliant and terrifying.   The Silence of the Girls is, to my mind, far and away the best of the recent feminist takes on Greek myth.   Life Class is not quite as good.

Running Blind - Desmond Bagley

I had, of course, heard of Desmond Bagley. He was a big noise in the Sixties and Seventies. I had not realised that he died comparatively young (59) in 1983. I had never read any of his books. Then I was pointed in the direction of this linked double-bill (the 'Slade' novels) in ebook for only £1.99.

It was certainly money well spent. Written in 1970, Running Blind hasn't dated at all, presumably thanks to Bagley's habit of keeping things simple on the surface and deep beneath. Alan Stewart, the hero, comes to us with considerable back story, so much so that I was startled to realise there were no earlier instalments.

Stewart owns a Scottish glen but was brought up in Sweden. He is a retired British spy, having fallen fall of his department head, Slade. He spends a lot of time in Iceland, has an Icelandic home, an Icelandic girlfriend, and speaks the language. Hence he is asked by Slade to deliver a small package to a contact there. Stewart interprets this as a peace offering, a potential route back into espionage, and agrees.

Once in Iceland, he is ambushed. Everyone seems to know he is there, and carrying something important. He is chased across the volcanic landscape and soon realises the man in pursuit is the former KGB agent Kennikin. For Kennikin the chase is personal; in Stewart's last mission he accidently emasculated the Russian. Surely, in all the circumstances, Kennikin is also on the inactive list. So who has sent him to Iceland?

I was fascinated to learn that Running Blind was Bagley's first spy thriller. You'd never guess.