Noonday

Product Description

'Afterwards, it was the horses she remembered, galloping towards them out of the orange-streaked darkness, their manes and tails on fire . . . '

London, the Blitz, autumn 1940. As the bombs fall on a terrified city, ambulance driver Elinor Brooke races through black nights of carnage. A former artist who - like her husband Paul - saw the hopes of her generation die on the battlefields of the First World War, she watches in impotent horror as death rains down. Overwhelmed by the endless destruction and carelessly betrayed by Paul, Elinor seeks solace away from home, but no life and no lover can remain unscarred amidst so much ruin.

Our foremost literary chronicler of the First World War, Pat Barker turns her critical, compassionate eye on the brutality and terror of the Second.

'Barker has a gift for weaving impeccably researched historical fact with fiction.' The Times

'As searing as anything Barker has written before. Beautifully crafted.' Daily Express

'Tremendously good.' Daily Mail

'Terrific.' Mail on Sunday

'Bristling with period detail and gritty, well-researched atmosphere. Barker excels.' Observer

'Brilliantly astute, strangely hypnotic.' Guardian