Wide Open

by Nicola Barker

Book Overview

As winner of the highly prestigious IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award, Wide Open beat out books by such masters as Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, and Michael Cunningham. It is truly extraordinary... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060933755
• ISBN13: 9780060933753
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

worth reading

Although this book has been written in an unusual style with a cast of unusual characters, I was completely intrigued by the strangeness and was drawn in to find out more. This book is so very different from anything I've ever read before or since. The storyline feels like a disjointed dream that reflects the subconcious of some unique and disturbing characters. Not a light read but truly artistic.

A work of "cornball perversion," staggering originality.

Barker herself once described this as a novel of "cornball perversion," and no one who reads it will ever dispute that. Filled with the weirdest group of gonzo characters ever assembled, it includes Ronny, a homeless man whose real name is Jim; Jim, a hairless man whose real name is Ronny and who works spraying weed killer along the roads; Luke, a photographer of pornography who smells like fish; and Lily, a violent and rebellious teenager who suffers from a clotting disorder and worships The Head. And if these characters were not already bizarre enough, Barker also opens the Pandora's box of their not-in-the-textbook psyches to the reader--showing them to be even more off-the-wall than we had ever dreamed. Providing fertile ground for all the aberrations to flourish, the author sets the characters in a remote seaside resort/nudist colony during the off-season, with additional forays to a nearby boar farm, the Lost and Found Department of the London Underground, and a bat cave in Sumatra, where a character we know only from her letters is searching for a hairy hominid with no big toes. Obviously, not your granny's novel. Wide Open is like nothing you've ever read before-absolutely original, sometimes wacky, sometimes poignant, sometimes violent, and always fascinating. The fluidity of Barker's prose keeps the reader zipping along, despite the fact that we can't always tell when she's putting us on, aren't always sure what's going on, and often suspect there are deep themes here if only we could catch our breaths long enough to figure them out. This is an absolutely exhilarating wild ride if the reader is willing to be "wide open." Mary Whipple

A work of "cornball perversion," staggering originality!

Barker herself once described this as a novel of "cornball perversion," and no one who reads it will ever dispute that! It is filled with the weirdest group of gonzo characters ever assembled, among them Ronny, a homeless man whose real name is Jim; Jim, a hairless man whose real name is Ronny and who works spraying weed killer along the roads; Luke, a photographer of pornography who smells like fish; and Lily, a violent and rebellious teenager who suffers from a clotting disorder and worships The Head. And if these characters were not already bizarre enough, Barker also opens the Pandora's box of their not-in-the-textbook psyches to the reader--showing them to be even more off-the-wall than we had ever dreamed! Providing fertile ground for all the aberrations to flourish, the author sets the characters in a remote seaside resort/nudist colony during the off-season, with additional forays to a nearby boar farm, the Lost and Found Department of the London Underground, and a bat cave in Sumatra, where a character we know only from her letters is searching for a hairy hominid with no big toes. Obviously, not your grandmother's novel.Wide Open is like nothing you've ever read before-absolutely original, sometimes wacky, sometimes poignant, sometimes violent, and always fascinating. The fluidity of Barker's prose keeps the reader zipping along, despite the fact that we can't always tell when she's putting us on, aren't always sure what's going on, and often suspect there are deep themes here if only we could catch our breaths long enough to figure them out. This is an absolutely exhilarating wild ride if the reader is willing to be "wide open."

Gothic by the Seaside

A group of people with strange but not abnormaloccupations. They try to find to each other, but mostly lockhorns. All of them seem weird. But the true weirdo in the group is the most lucid one. Is this a Gothic tale? Or a psycho-thriller? Has it some deeply hidden, dark meaning of a philosophical nature? Who knows? It can be rather confusing. The author handles the English language beautifully and can raise her prose to near poetry. The actors on the stage and their surroundings are sharply drawn. For that alone, the book is a pleasure to read. However, towards the end, the narration seems to flatten out and just bring confusion without greater purpose...

Very...."Wide Open"

Nicola Barker has immortalized her own unique storytelling style in Wide Open . A thoroughly enjoyable experience. Exhilarating and creepy. Ms. Barker's multidimensional polarization of normally obscure and suppressed (however significant) character traits makes this unique literary work a time stamp and a benchmark of monumental importance. Does this work epitomize modern societies unquenchable thirst for the off centred? I hope that the huge acclaim Wide Open will no doubt heap on Ms Barker will not distract her from her counter focus on the 'habitual and banal'.