Toby's Room cover art

Toby's Room

 Preview

Get 30 days of Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30-day free trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options
Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of the second novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - a dark and compelling examination of desire, friendship and the horror of war, from one of our greatest writers on war and the human heart

From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls

'Heart-rending... Toby's Room anatomises a world where extreme emotion shatters the boundaries of identity, behaviour, gender' Independent

'Once again Barker skilfully moves between past and present, seamlessly weaving fact and fiction into a gripping narrative' Sunday Telegraph

When Toby is reported 'Missing, Believed Killed', another secret casts a lengthening shadow over Elinor's world: how exactly did Toby die - and why? Elinor determines to uncover the truth. Only then can she finally close the door to Toby's room. Moving from the Slade School of Art to Queen Mary's Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in the rebuilding of the shattered faces of the wounded, Toby's Room is a riveting drama of identity, damage, intimacy and loss.

The Life Class trilogy:
Life Class
Toby's Room
Noonday

 20th Century Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction War & Military World War I Military

Critic reviews

Magnificent; I finished eagerly wanting to know what happened next, and as I read, I was enjoying, marvelling and learning (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
The plot unfurls to a devastating conclusion ... a fine piece of work (Melvyn Bragg)
A heart-rending return to the Great War. A superb stylist ... forensically observant and imaginatively sublime
Dark, painful, yet also tender. It succeeds brilliantly (John Vernon)
All stars
Most relevant
Lovely narration, particularly the female voices. Irritation at modern nuances of speech by the younger voices, “corrida”instead of “corridor” is just one example.
But worse was the narration of Henry Tonks, from which we have the artist’s technique of “tonking” or should this be written with a capital “T”?
Henry Tonks was born in 1862 and yet he sounds like a contemporary of Paul and Kit. This jarred for me. But this is hardly the fault of the chosen narrator. I do wish more care was taken by whomever decides on narrators.

But another very enjoyable book in this trilogy. I have other works in mind by Pat Barker when this trilogy is completed.

Narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.