Wide Open Book

Wide Open, Nicola Barker's fifth book and winner of the International Impac Dublin Literary Award 2000, has taken all the elements of her first book, Love Your Enemies, and made them into a shimmering, simmering heart-break story. Written seven years ago, when she was 27, Love Your Enemies' ten short stories were enticingly strange, full of ugly truths, askew beauty. The locations were unglamorous and the characters ordinary, and damaged by life. Barker's writing was full of humour, an acidic wit that stripped away all sentimentality, but left a sheen of sadness. Wide Open is set on the Isle Of Sheppey, "a strange place, flat and empty like the moon." On the island is a nudist beach, a nature reserve, a wild boar farm and not much else. The landscape is bare, but the characters in are brim-full. There's Luke, who specialises in dot-to-dot pornography, and lippy Lily, just 17 and full of outrageous anger. Jim and Nathan end up on Sheppey too, as well as the mysterious figure of Ronnie who is "plain as a boiled sweet" but whose eyes are "deep, complex, dark ringed". Each one is drifting in turbulent, emotional currents, fighting the rip tide of a past, bleak with secrets and fear. "Hell wasn't black after all. It was an endless, hollow, grey colour and it felt slippery. Nathan could find no finger holds. Even though his hands were still small. He was 8 years old and there was nothing to cling onto." As an adult Nathan works in a Lost Property department, an irony that is almost brutal in its compassion. Wide Open lays bare the damage done, the awful connection between the characters, which stretches back to childhood. It is beautifully written, crisp, darkly funny and, for all its weighty themes, light as joy to read. --Eithne FarryRead More