Union Street

Vivid, bawdy and bitter' (The Times), Pat Barker's first novel shows the women of Union Street, young and old, meeting the harsh challeges of poverty and survival in a precarious world. There's Kelly, at eleven, neglected and independent, dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah, knocking on sixty and still on the game; Joanne, not yet twenty, not yet married, and already pregnant; Old Alice, welcoming her impending death; Muriel helplessly watching the decline of her stoical husband. And linking them all, watching over them all, mother to half the street, is fiery, indomitable Iris.

Winner of Fawcett Society Book Prize 1983

“Vivid, bawdy and bitter - The Times 'Barker's talent for gently sifting through the hidden depths of the human psyche is awesome?NovaVivid, bawdy and bitter - The Times 'Barker's talent for gently sifting through the hidden depths of the human psyche is awesome'Nova”

Vivid, bawdy and bitter - The Times 'Barker's talent for gently sifting through the hidden depths of the human psyche is awesome?

Pat Barker was born in 1943. She was chosen in 1983 as one of the twenty 'Best of Young British' novelists and won the Booker Prize with The Ghost Road in 1995. She lives in Durham.

Vivid, bawdy and bitter' (The Times), Pat Barker's first novel shows the women of Union Street, young and old, meeting the harsh challeges of poverty and survival in a precarious world. There's Kelly, at eleven, neglected and independent, dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah, knocking on sixty and still on the game; Joanne, not yet twenty, not yet married, and already pregnant; Old Alice, welcoming her impending death; Muriel helplessly watching the decline of her stoical husband. And linking them all, watching over them all, mother to half the street, is fiery, indomitable Iris.

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