Product Description

A city and its people are in the grip of a killer who is roaming the northern city, singling out prostitutes. The face of his latest victim stares out from every newspaper and billboard, haunting the women who walk the streets. But life and work go on. Brenda, with three children, can't afford to give up while Audrey, now in her forties, desperately goes on 'working the cars'. And then, when another women is savagely murdered, Jean, her lover, takes desperate measures.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78369 in Books
• Published on: 1990-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
'Barker's creative vision is as in touch with the psychologically primordial as Melville's' HARPER'S 'Swift, spare, and utterly absorbing . [Barker] makes us see her characters from within, as they see themselves, and thereby reveals the full individuality and humanity of women who have got short shrift both in literature and in life' NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW 'Barker's talent for gently sifting through the hidden depths of the human psyche is awesome' NOVA

In Union Street (1973), first-novelist Barker offered grim, vibrant, memorable vignettes of women's lives in England's industrial north. Here, with somewhat less breadth and power, she focuses on a few prostitutes in that same setting; and again, while attempts at novelistic shape and heavy thematics go awry, the portraits themselves are richly sad in vivid, spare observation. In the book's first half, we meet Brenda, devoted mother of three, as she sets off for her usual evening's work: some loosening-up at the pub, followed by a night of street-walking in mutually protective partnership with chum Audrey. Meanwhile, flashbacks fill in Brenda's reluctant but unmelodramatic path to prostitution: a feckless, deserting Mama's-boy of a husband; a slimy job at the local chicken-factory - lost when Brenda couldn't find a non-abusive "child-minder" for her kids; no money for the rent, the obvious solution, the social ostracism, the fear that the kids will Find Out. And there are graphic, depressing encounters with a variety of customers: "if they were nasty you hated them; if they were nice you hated yourself." Then, in the less compelling second half, a first-person narrator takes over: prostitute Jean, who recalls her equally dour on-the-job experiences, but also her slow-developing love affair with colleague Carol. And, throughout, least successfully, Barker attempts to add suspense - and a violence-against-women theme - through a psycho-thriller subplot: several prostitutes, including alcoholic Kath and Jean's lover Carol, have been murdered by an impotent misogynist; a terrified Jean is driven to kill in (mistaken?) self-defense; and an odd final chapter presents the effect of a random assault on a non-prostitute - a middle-aged factory-worker whose husband is a suspect in the multiple-murder case. As a novel, then, this is rather awkward - in both the halfhearted use of mystery/suspense elements and in the familiar variations on feminist themes (wifedom as prostitution, etc.). But Barker's specifics - from factory to kids to shops to ugly car/alley sex - are indelibly authentic, affectingly severe. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
A city and its people are in the grip of a killer who is roaming the northern city, singling out prostitutes. The face of his latest victim stares out from every newspaper and billboard, haunting the women who walk the streets. But life and work go on. Brenda, with three children, can't afford to give up while Audrey, now in her forties, desperately goes on 'working the cars'. And then, when another women is savagely murdered, Jean, her lover, takes desperate measures.

About the Author
Pat Barker is one of England's most important contemporary novelists. Union St, her first novel, was published by Virago in 1982 to huge critical acclaim. Barker won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1993 and the Booker Prize in 1995. She lives in Durham.

Customer Reviews

Very good
A very good book, very original and brilliantly written. Pat Barker is an excellent author, and this book is a good example of her writing. A gripping read, just like the amazing trilogy 'Regeneration', which had me in tears at various points. A rewarding book.