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Nicola Barker: Critical Essays

Edited by Berthold Schoene

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Product details

20 Oct 2020

ISBN 9781780240923 (Paperback)
230 pp., Free UK Shipping

About

Nicola Barker's exuberant novels here receive the scholarly attention they deserve in a collection of essays which moves chronologically through her oeuvre. The chapters are broad-ranging, placing Barker's work in its contemporary context and collectively making a convincing case for her importance as one of our most inventive novelists.

Reviews

When the best new writers emerge, they have to invent their readers. The best new criticism aids in that invention. This collection of essays is a striking act of co-invention that brings Nicola Barker's work into focus, in all its singularity, its bumpiness, and its brilliance. --Peter Boxall, Professor of English, University of Sussex

Nicola Barker's exuberant and experimental novels here receive the scholarly attention they deserve in a collection of essays which moves chronologically through her oeuvre. These chapters are insightful, engaging, and broad-ranging, placing Barker's work in its contemporary context and collectively making a convincing case for her importance as one of our most inventive novelists writing today. This volume, which is accompanied by a helpful introductory overview of Barker's output and a typically contradictory forward by Nicola Barker herself, will be invaluable for scholars of contemporary literature and for students and other readers of Barker who want to further understand the significance of her work. --Jennifer Cooke, Senior Lecturer in English, Loughborough University

Much like the Barkeresque mode they explore, the chapters Schoene has gathered together excite with their faith and fascination with Barker's open-ended Britains of now – all the more urgent in our closed-bordered times. --Dougal McNeill, Senior Lecturer in the English, Victoria University of Wellington

The idiosyncratic exuberance of her writing has made Nicola Barker one of Britain's most reliably unpredictable experimental novelists. Tracking her creative trajectory over the last quarter century, the ten new essays curated by Schoene examine Barker's predilection for marginal geographies, her eclectic affiliation with various literary genealogies, and the breadth of her stylistic range. Not only does this collection for the first time open up Barker's work to critical debates, it makes it positively indispensable for any future reckoning with contemporary British writing. --Pieter Vermeulen, Professor of English, University of Leuven

Foreword
Nicola Barker

The Barkeresque Mode: An Introduction
Berthold Schoene

Indie Style: Reversed Forecast and a Turn-of-the-Century Aesthetic
Ben Masters

'Temporary People': Wide Open as an Island Narrative
Daniel Marc Janes

'You grew up in this shithole, then?': Literary Geographics and the Thames Gateway Series
Len Platt

'The Pair of Opposites Paradox': Ambivalence, Destabilization and Resistance in Five Miles from Outer Hope
Ginette Carpenter

'Woah there a moment. Time out!': Slowing Down in Clear: A Transparent Novel
Beccy Kennedy

Beneath the Thin Veneer of the Modern: Medievalism in Darkmans
Christopher Vardy

Burley Cross Postbox Theft as Comedy
Huw Marsh

'Tuning into My "Awareness Continuum"': Optimized Attention in The Yips
Alice Bennett

Exuberant Narration as Metaphysical Currency in In the Approaches
Berthold Schoene

The Pursuit of Happiness in H(A)PPY, or What a Difference an (A) Makes
Eleanor Byrne

Notes on Contributors

Index