Word: barker
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...reached the consolation finals by beating sophomore teammate Anthony Barker in a 7-5, 2-6, 6-2 battle in the opening round of the backdraw. This may have been Lee's toughest match of the tournament as he then dominated Alabama's Weylu Chang...
...Barker assembles a cast of Londoners, misfits all, for her novel. Lily, the girl born wihtout fully-formed organs: Sara, Lily's mother and a boar farmer: Luke, the former pornographic photographer who smells of fish; Ronny, missing his big toes. At the slippery heart of her tale are two adult brothers, Nathan and Jim (whose name is really Ronny--all will be explained later) and Nathan's quest for redemption at not forcing his brother to escape from their pedophilic father...
...same way that all her characters choose to retreat from society to hide their lurid pasts, Barker opts for layer upon layer of density. Perhaps some things are not meant to be understood. Like Luke's bizarre join-the-dots form of pornography, the strength lies in what is actually missing--to be wide open is to be exposed, to be "wide open as a can of worms." Revelation, for the reader as much as the characters, is best in limited quantities...
Despite the initially complicated plot, the undeniable force of Barker's style draws us in anyway. All throughout the novel, she excels in conveying an underlying rumble of disquiet, a feeling that something is imperceptibly off-kilter. Like Ronny' missing big toes, there is a sense that something profoundly important lies just out of four sight. The cadence of the sentences resound at the level of a missed heartbeat: "He turned and cut into the sandwich. The yolk was cold, and the blade was much sharper than he'd anticipated." The resonances eventually swell to an emotionally intense climax...
...engaging characters and the refreshing lines of description and dialogue of Wide Open have garnered high praise since its release in the United Kingdom about six months ago; this Stateside release is an excellent trans-Atlantic introduction to the ferocious originality of Nicola Barker's work. It is a novel into which, like Ronny listening to a story of Jim's we are "slowly, safely, surely, soundly" hooked...