Nicola Barker’s readers are primed to expect surprises, but her tenth novel delivers mind-meld on a metaphysical scale. From quiet beginnings in the picturesque English seaside enclave of Pett Level, ‘In The Approaches’ ultimately constructs its own anarchic city-state on the previously undiscovered common ground between G.K. Chesterton and Philip K. Dick. On the one hand, this is an old-fashioned romantic comedy of fused buttocks, shrunken heads and Irish-Aboriginal saints; on the other it’s Barker’s wildest and most haunting book since 2007’s Booker Prize-shortlisted ‘Darkmans’.Following previous celebrations of the enduring allure of the posted letter (’Burley Cross Postbox Theft’) and the pre-lapsarian innocence of pre-Twitter celebrity (Booker-longlisted ‘The Yips’), this concluding instalment of Barker’s subliminally affiliated ‘digital trilogy’ imagines a basis for the internet in Catholic theology. Set in a 1984 which seems almost as distantly located in the past as Orwell’s was in the future, ‘In the Approaches’ offers a captivating glimpse of something more shocking than any dystopia – the possibility of faith.
Оглавление
Nicola Barker. In the Approaches
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
1. Miss Carla Hahn
2. Mr Franklin D. Huff
3. Miss Carla Hahn
4. Mr Franklin D. Huff
5. Miss Carla Hahn
6. Teobaldo
7. Mr Franklin D. Huff
8. Miss Carla Hahn
9. Mr Franklin D. Huff
10. Miss Carla Hahn
11. Mr Clifford Bickerton
12. Mr Franklin D. Huff
13. Miss Carla Hahn
14. Teobaldo
15. Mr Franklin D. Huff
16. Miss Carla Hahn
17. Mr Franklin D. Huff
18. Miss Carla Hahn
19. Mr Franklin D. Huff
20. Teobaldo
21. Miss Carla Hahn
22. Mr Clifford Bickerton
23. Mr Franklin D. Huff
24. Miss Carla Hahn
25. Mr Franklin D. Huff
26. Teobaldo
27. Miss Carla Hahn
28. Mr Franklin D. Huff
29. Miss Carla Hahn
30. Mr Clifford Bickerton
31. Mr Franklin D. Huff
32. Miss Carla Hahn
33. Mr Clifford Bickerton
34. Miss Carla Hahn
35. Mr Franklin D. Huff
36. Miss Carla Hahn
37. Mr Franklin D. Huff
38. Miss Carla Hahn
39. Mr Clifford Bickerton
40. Miss Carla Hahn
41. Mr Franklin D. Huff
42. Miss Carla Hahn
43. Mr Franklin D. Huff
44. Miss Carla Hahn
45. Mr Franklin D. Huff
46. Miss Alys Jane Drury (and Baldo!)
47. Mr Franklin D. Huff
48. Miss Carla Hahn
49. Mr Franklin D. Huff
50. Miss Carla Hahn
51. Mr Franklin D. Huff
52. Miss Carla Hahn
53. Mr Franklin D. Huff
Also by Nicola Barker
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
Cover
Title Page
.....
‘Yes.’ He looks suitably crestfallen at the notion. ‘We’ve been engaged for eight years now. I suppose I must probably feel something.’
(Clifford and Alice, a local milkmaid, were engaged after she proposed to him, in 1976, a leap year, and he was just too kind to say no. At least that was always his version of events. Alice plays the scene quite differently, by all accounts.) I nod. Now it’s my turn to look crestfallen. I decide to take it on the chin, though, and promptly rally. I draw a steadying breath and strengthen my resolve. I know that the worst thing I could possibly do under these particular circumstances would be to offer Clifford any form of assistance.
