- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Fourth Estate; First Edition edition (6 Sep 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 000719241X
- ISBN-13: 978-0007192410
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 927,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Clear: A Transparent Novel
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘Compelling. Barker's narrative draws us in with the disturbing, surreal touch of a latter-day Lewis Carroll.' Sunday Times
'Dazzling… She celebrates the complexity of human experience.'’The Times
'Insanely inventive. Her vision of a marginal Britain populated by drifters and desperados is fired by a comic energy that dances on the edge of self-combustion.' Guardian
'Barker's eccentrics are the stuff of pure farce. And they allow her to reinvent, joyously, the cogs, gears and mechanics of the genre. She knows, as Wodehouse also knew, how to rev up the language, do baroque variations on a phrase, even break into a kind of poetry.’ New York Times
Spectator
'Here is a highly intelligent writer. Here also an undoubtedly innovative and talented one.'
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
I couldn't even begin to tell you why, exactly, but my head was suddenly buzzing with the opening few lines of Jack Schaefer's Shane (his 'Classic Novel of the American West'. Remember?). Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I couldn't even begin to tell you why, exactly, but my head was suddenly buzzing with the opening few lines of Jack Schaefer's Shane (his 'Classic Novel of the American West'. Remember?). Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This novel was on my reading list for a Innovative Contemporary Novel module, and I wasn't sure what to make it of from the blurb. However, after the first chapter I was completely drawn in and found it absolutely hilarious! I love the fact that Barker writes from a man's point of view, and how the whole thing is structured around David Blaine's above the below. Her use of writing is also very refreshing, and I strongly recommend this book. I gave it 4 stars as I don't think it is a good as other books I have read, but it is by no means bad or confusing as other reviewers have said.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Clear is the best novel I've read this year. Ms. Barker has reignited my belief that good writing lives . . . and that novels can be innovative, literate, surprising and accessible.
The book's main theme is that even when we think we are seeing, our perceptions of appearances are deceiving us.
What can be more transparent than an illusionist, David Blaine, who sits suspended in a Perspex box above the Thames while he fasts for 44 days? That central image becomes the fulcrum for this insightful, witty novel about modern conceits.
You soon get a hint that the book is in part about writing when the narrator, Adair Graham MacKenny, opens the narration with ribald praise for the language in Jack Schaefer's Shane. Later, Blaine's very illusion is discussed in terms of a Kafka story. Unlike snobbish novelists, Ms. Barker shares everything you need to know to share her point.
As the story develops, you find yourself in the middle of an enigma wrapped in several mysteries, one Aphra by name, who sits every night watching Blaine in the wee hours while others sleep, who keeps dozens of containers of gourmet food which alternative with regurgitated remnants of such food, and wears outrageous shoes. Aphra's shoe fetish nicely matches Adair's foot fetish, and Adair finds himself in enraptured pursuit. As the mysteries about Aphra are gradually resolved, you begin to appreciate Ms. Barker's point about not knowing what we are seeing. In one powerful passage on page 311, she reveals all in describing Blaine's magic:
"He's like a mirror in which people can see the very best and the very worst of themselves."
Clear goes on to make the point that we all use other people in the same way. It's clear!
Format:Paperback
"Another of Nicola Barker's amazing novels which just capture the ways and words of her characters so clearly. Narrated by 28yr old Adair, he works at the GLC and is drawn to watch the spectacle that was David Blaine suspended in a glass box by the Thames in 2003, and meets some interesting people there too. He is cocky and arrogant, but does try to think about things, and close to the start of the book comes out with this amazing simile describing the spectacle and egg-throwing attendant public - I quote:
"it's like the embankment is a toilet and Blaine is just the scented rim-block dangling in his disposable plastic container from the bowl at the top."
You can picture it exactly can't you!
During Blaine's self-imposed imprisonment, Adie meets, falls for and is confused by Aphra a gourmet cook, has many philosophical discussions with his landlord Solomon, and ultimately finds himself - in a sort of I can see clearly now the Blaine has gone kind of way (excuse my awful pun).
This novel just draws you in and doesn't let go."
"it's like the embankment is a toilet and Blaine is just the scented rim-block dangling in his disposable plastic container from the bowl at the top."
You can picture it exactly can't you!
During Blaine's self-imposed imprisonment, Adie meets, falls for and is confused by Aphra a gourmet cook, has many philosophical discussions with his landlord Solomon, and ultimately finds himself - in a sort of I can see clearly now the Blaine has gone kind of way (excuse my awful pun).
This novel just draws you in and doesn't let go."
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Another excellent Barker novel.
There can't be that many novels that have stellar reviews from both the Times Literary Supplement and Heat Magazine, but Clear by Nicola Barker is just such a one. Read more
Published on 25 Mar 2008 by Other Stories
Sorry - I just don't get it
The first 25 pages of this book made me think that it was going to be one of those "hey, look at me", barely readable, tricksy, oddly-structured stabs at "modern literature"... Read more
Published on 30 Aug 2005 by G. L. Haggett
Brilliant
I loved this book. It combines depth with a very dry, tongue in cheek humour.
The central construct is the contrast between a man who can eat but chooses not to (David Blaine)... Read more
Published on 26 Jan 2005 by The Sword of Truth
Awful
Almost all members of my book group agreed that this is an awful book. It was written in a hurry, is populated by cliched characters, and flogs the David Blaine event (and the... Read more
Published on 1 Dec 2004
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