In her early novels she focused on the day-to-day lives of working-class women in the north-east of England, making a debut so striking with Union Street (1982) that she was included on Granta’s inaugural selection of the Best of Young British Novelists (she was photographed alongside, among other luminaries, one M Amis). Ranging widely, her books require her to confront and convey violence both personal and military, the morality of war, class and sexual conflict and the nature of psychopathy. Not only do stricken pigeons actually feature in her new novel, Noonday – their wings ablaze during the so-called second great fire of London at the height of the blitz – but her work returns over and again to notably painful and complex subjects. I think I’m fairly edgy, but not dead pigeon sort of edgy”. But, alas, “there the poor photographer was, stuck with me. Wouldn’t it have been better, she jokes, if Martin Amis had been there instead of her? I see what she means: Amis’s writing, and certainly the persona that has been created for him, more obviously lend themselves to such a macabre prop. P at Barker returns from being photographed having encountered, en route, a dead pigeon.
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